Association of sport and recreational facilities with adult residents’ participation in leisure time physical activities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Abstract

The Sport Policy of Ethiopia, declared in 1998, underlines the importance of developing public sport and recreational facilities to the community for enhancing mass participation. However, after 20 years of its implementation, residents in Addis Ababa still play ball games on derelict areas and complain about scarcity of physical activity resources. This study investigated the provision of resources and its association with participation level of adult residents in LTPA in Nefas Silk Lafto sub-city, Addis Ababa. Adult residents (n = 384), sport facility experts (n = 32) and sport facility department heads (n = 2) participated in the study. We used questionnaires, observations, interview and GIS measures for collecting data and analyzed them by descriptive methods, t-test, ANOVA and multiple regression. Poor availability, low participation and positive association between facility provision and level of participation were indicated. The article argues that there is a gap in realizing policy objective, which has its roots in providing resources.

Keywords:

• Neighbourhood environment
• barriers
• physical activity behaviour
• ecological model
• intervention

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to the anonymous referees of the journal for their constructive, unreserved and wholehearted comments that were helpful to finalize the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to owe their extreme gratitude to Mekelle University for the financial support it provided us to conduct this research.