Weather: An organizational stakeholder for United States national seashores

Abstract

This study introduces weather as an organizational stakeholder to United States National Seashores. Stakeholder theory contends there are parties that affect or are affected by an organization. I contend that weather meets the four criteria of a stakeholder including power, legitimacy, temporal urgency, and geographic proximity, thus affects organizations and should be included alongside traditional human stakeholders (e.g., competitors). To test the thesis, I offer the case of visitation to United States National Seashores. Weather is operationalized as thermal stress (i.e., heat, humidity) and visitation is the dependent variable. Multiple methodologies including forecasting models and paired-sample t-tests were utilized to test four hypotheses, one for each stakeholder criteria. Results demonstrate weather is a performance predictor at 73% of seashores (power), thermal stress risks increased at 91% of seashores deriving response (legitimacy), and weather was temporally local and geographically proximate at each location. That is, weather demonstrates four-dimensional stakeholder standing.