Table 1 Studies on the impact of sport participation on subjective well-being (in chronological order)
From: Subjective well-being in European countries—on the age-specific impact of physical activity
Authors | Country | Data | Estimator | Central findings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Becchetti et al. [3] | Germany | German Social Economic Panel (GSOEP) | Ordinary least squares (OLS) and fixed effects (FE) | Relational goods, including sports participation individually and collectively increases life satisfaction |
Lechner [30] | Germany | German Social Economic Panel (GSOEP) | Matching estimator | Significant effects of sport participation upon SWB of males are identified but positive and insignificant effects for females |
Rasciute and Downward [36] | UK | UK Taking Part Survey | Bivariate and ordered probit, seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) | Sports participation and walking have a positive effect on both the individual’s health and happiness. Cycling also appears to involve some negative impact on happiness, which could be the disutility associated with traffic congestion |
Downward and Rasciute [13] | UK | UK Taking Part Survey | Heterogeneous threshold ordered probit estimator | Sports participation increases SWB generally, but more so in the context of social interactions (team sports and sports undertaken with a partner) |
Lee and Park [31] | Korea | Primary data | Ordered probit, ordered logit and OLS | Controlling for six different types of physical disability it is shown that sports participation raises the probability of higher levels of SWB |