Social Interactions and the Demand for Sport: An Economic Analysis

Abstract

"This paper explores the decision to participate in sports activities in the United Kingdom and the subsequent frequency of participation. The paper draws links between economic and other theories of social interaction to motivate the discussion and links these theories to assessing policy initiatives in the United Kingdom. Cluster analysis is combined with a Heckman analysis to examine the empirical evidence provided by the General Household Survey in 2002. The results suggest that social and personal capital are of paramount importance in determining sports participation, and consequently, it is these features that policy should focus upon. However, the legitimacy of policy activism requires philosophical justification. "("JEL "B41, C2, D11, D12) Copyright 2007 Western Economic Association International.

Physical activity habits in a European sports event: A case study

“…According to the relationship between age group and frequency of physical activity and sports practice, we found a decrease in frequency of physical activity related to age, in agreement with other investigations (Downward & Riordan, 2007;Hovemann & Wicker, 2009). However, this fact is true only up to the age of 64 years, since the older group (+65 years) presents physical activity levels similar to or even higher than that of younger age groups.…”

“…In addition, a recreational orientation attracts mainly men and young people, whereas physical activities attract females and older individuals if the emphasis is on improving health and physical appearance (Lera-López & Rapún-Gárate, 2011). On the other hand, other studies suggest that sport participation decreases as age increases (Downward, 2007;Downward & Riordan, 2007;Hovemann & Wicker, 2009). The probability that a person participates in physical and sports activities is reduced by 0.3% per year (Humphreys & Ruseski, 2006).…”

“…Moreover, other authors found a negative influence of income level on sport participation frequency (Downward & Riordan, 2007;Humphreys & Ruseski, 2006). Burillo et al (2011) explain that this occurs because lower-income groups typically live in residential areas with more unemployment, less sports facilities, few green areas, and low investment in sports activities for the community.…”

‘No man is an island entire of itself.’ The hidden effect of peers on physical activity

“…Downward and Riordan (2007) identify an association between the shared characteristics of individuals and participation in sports. Farrell and Shields (2002), Downward (2007) and Humphreys and Ruseski (2015) find positive and negative associations between physical activity and marriage depending on the activity, with Wicker et al, (2009) andRuseski et al, (2011) finding mixed effects according to the activity when there are children in the household. Finally, Rapp and Schneider (2013) identify that more formal cohabitation status, such as marriage, reduced physical activity more than cohabitation and dating relationships.…”

“…The first is that, as identified in Section 3, peer effects are intrinsically manifestations of simultaneous behaviour and consequently instrumental variable analysis needs to be undertaken in order to remove the bias that this causes in estimating the effect of the peer effects variable. The second, and related, issue is that the above models are likely to nest implicit dynamic behaviour caused by the 'habit persistence' of participation in physical activities like sport (see for example, Downward and Riordan, 2007;Downward et al, 2015). This would be manifested in the presence of serial correlation of the residuals.…”