AUTHOR=Zhao Shutong , Huang Haiyan 

TITLE=The impact of the sports industry on the development of the health industry: an exploration of mediating and threshold effects

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1691241

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2025.1691241

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=IntroductionThe sports and health industries play a crucial role in fulfilling individuals' aspirations for an enhanced quality of life and in supporting the development of a Healthy China.MethodsTo explore the impact mechanism of the sports industry (SID) on the development of the health industry (HID), this study employed a rigorous empirical framework utilizing panel data from 30 provinces in China over the period 2014–2023. Using fixed-effects and mediation-effect models, this study examined the influence mechanism and identified the key pathways through which the sports industry impacts the development of the health industry.ResultsThe results demonstrate that the sports industry positively influences the development of the health industry. This conclusion remains robust across a series of robustness tests. The heterogeneous analysis reveals regional variation in the impact of the sports industry on the health industry development. Among the regions, the sports industry has the strongest promotional effect on health industry's development in the western regions, followed by the eastern and central regions. Conversely, the impact in the northeastern regions is relatively negligible. Mediation effect analysis reveals that the sports industry can effectively stimulate the development of the health industry by significantly increasing R&D intensity. Furthermore, testing the threshold effect indicates that the impact of the sports industry on the health industry exhibits a double threshold and non-linear diminishing marginal effects.DiscussionThis study contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the sports industry's impact on the health industry. Based on these findings, we proposed a series of targeted recommendations.