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Articles

Too busy or too far away? The importance of subjective constraints and spatial factors for sports frequency

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Abstract

Previous studies on the association between the availability of sports facilities and sports participation have neglected the influence of subjective constraints that individuals experience with regard to sports participation. This paper investigates to what extent constraints experienced by sports participants are associated with their spatial circumstances and whether these subjective constraints or objective spatial circumstances have a greater impact on sports frequency. Based on a survey among 776 adults in urban and rural municipalities in the Netherlands, regression analyses revealed that constraints were related to neighbourhood liveability and distance to indoor sports facilities and swimming pools. Time constraints had a strong negative effect on sports frequency, but the effect of distance to indoor facilities and swimming pools was even more important. Our results furthermore indicate a growing need for flexibility in the spatiotemporal organization of sports activities and an increased importance of the public space for sports participation.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Hugo van der Poel and Remco Hoekman for their comments and discussions of earlier versions of this paper, which have significantly added to its quality. We also thank Sjors Hoek for helping with the GIS analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23750472.2019.1565062)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research under NWO grant number 328-98-008.