Are Sports Champions Also Anti-Epidemic Heroes? Quantitative Research on the Influence of Sports Champions’ Demonstration Effect on the COVID-19 Epidemic in China

Abstract

What kind of role do sports champions play in the COVID-19 epidemic? Do they contribute to the mitigation of the epidemic by some pathway? In this paper, we empirically explore the influence and mechanism of the demonstration effect of sports champions upon the COVID-19 epidemic using COVID-19-related dataset of prefecture-level cities in China from 1 January 2020 to 17 March 2020. The two-way fixed effect model of econometrics is applied to estimate the result, the instrumental variable approach is adopted to address potential endogeneity issues, and socio-economic factors including public health measures, residents’ self-protection awareness, effective distance from Wuhan are also taken into consideration. The results show that the demonstration effect of champions in major sporting events increases the participation in physical exercise, which in turn reduces the possibility of being infected with the epidemic. An increase of one gold medal results in a 0.93% increase in the sports population, then leads to a 3.58% decrease in the cumulative case growth rate (p < 0.01). Further, we find that the effect is greater in regions with developed economies and abundant sports resources. Interestingly, it is greater in regions with less attention to sports, which again confirms the role of the demonstration effect.

Sports Participation and Anti-Epidemic: Empirical Evidence on the Influence of Regular Physical Activity on the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mainland China

“…In order to test the theoretical hypotheses, we performed ordinary least squares regression [ 11 , 43 , 47 , 49 ] to explore the effect of physical activity on COVID-19. To avoid biased estimators led by omitted variables, a two-way fixed-effects model, which is widely applied in the estimation of panel data [ 43 , 46 ], was used to control the time-invariant individual heterogeneity and the individual-invariant time heterogeneity.…”

“…Moreover, PA is beneficial to metabolic health as well as immune health, which decreases the risk of infectious complications [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ]. Therefore, regular physical activity seems to be an effective measure for the prevention of viral infections—especially COVID-19 [ 11 , 12 ]. However, there remains a lack of sufficient, global, and in-depth theoretical analysis and empirical evidence.…”

“…Daily epidemic-related panel data of 279 prefecture-level cities in mainland China were collected from 1 January to 17 March 2020. A two-way fixed-effects model in ordinary least squares (OLS) regression [ 11 , 42 , 43 , 46 , 47 , 49 , 50 ] was used to identify the causal relationship between physical activity and COVID-19, while also considering factors such as patterns of human behavior and socioeconomic conditions. To avoid biased estimation results due to endogeneity, the number of sports establishments was taken as an instrumental variable (IV) for physical activity, and a two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimation was performed [ 42 , 43 , 50 ].…”

The health benefit of physical exercise on COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from mainland China

“…In China, timely and strict public health interventions have played a crucial role in the mitigation of the COVID-19 outbreak. Referring to Huang et al [ 77 ], we scored the public health measures implementation intensity of each city based on the epidemic prevention policy announcement issued by the health commission and converted it into a dummy variable according to the mean value. If the value was higher than the mean value, then the value was 1, indicating relatively strict prevention and control intensity; otherwise, the value was 0.…”

“…Studies have shown that population mobility does not mainly depend on the geographical distance between regions, but on the convenience of mobility, that is, the effective distance between regions [ 77 ]. Referring to Lin et al [ 59 ], we calculated the effective distance to Wuhan, the city with the most severe epidemic in China.…”