Effect of Sports Participation on Subjective Well-Being: Instrumental Variable Results from Microdata
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Abstract
Policymakers worldwide have increasingly recognized the importance of sports participation, believing it enhances people’s quality of life, overall social welfare, and life satisfaction. This study utilizes individual-level data from Taiwan’s “Exercise Current Situation Survey” in 2019 to investigate the impact of sports participation on subjective well-being. We propose an individual’s perceptions of the government’s promotion of sports and the adequacy of sports facilities as instrumental variables (IVs), and a two-stage Poisson regression (2sPR) model is employed for analysis. The results indicate that sports participation has a significantly positive effect on personal subjective well-being. Regressions by gender revealed that men derive more well-being from sports participation than women do. Body mass index (BMI) and years of schooling have a positive and significant influence on subjective well-being. Conversely, respondents’ age, urbanization, and health status exhibit significant negative effects.
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