Views of young equestrians and lay people on equestrian sports in Sweden in 2020

Abstract Awareness of horse welfare is increasing worldwide. Understanding of how lay people and riders, and especially young adults, perceive interactions with horses is important for maintaining the social licence to operate of equestrian sports and to be anticipative. This study examined the views of young lay people and equestrians in Sweden towards dressage, show-jumping and three-day eventing. The hypothesis was that views would differ between groups of lay people and equestrians, but that most would describe equestrian sports in positive or neutral terms. In a cross-sectional study design, 18 focus group interviews were conducted with three categories of participants (age 18-25 years): six groups of competition riders, six groups of leisure riders, and six groups of lay people (5-8 people/group). Open-ended questions were used, and each group was interviewed for 40-60 minutes. Qualitative content analysis was performed on the responses, and codes were developed using both a deductive and an inductive approach. Procedure GLIMMIX was used to analyse differences in the number of times a code was mentioned. Forty-two codes were identified. The most commonly raised codes, irrespective of category, were mental well-being of humans (54), lack of time in life (49), mental distress (47), hard workers (45), lack of knowledge (43), responsibility (42) and horse welfare issues related to the rider (39). Groups of lay people talked less about the codes ‘mental distress’ ( ) and ‘horse welfare related to the rider’ ( ) than leisure riders. Groups of leisure riders talked more about ‘shortcomings in turnout’ than competition riders ( ), while no difference between groups of lay people and competition riders was found for this code. We conclude that there were only minor differences in views between lay people and riders and that all groups described equestrian sports mainly in positive terms.