Assessment of Olympic performance in relation to economic, demographic, geographic, and social factors: quantile and Tobit approaches

Abstract

The sports industry's global gain is worth drawing attention to in the face of economics. Scholars argued that a country's success in sports is directly related to its economic, demographic, geographic, and social factors. Therefore, investigating the relationship between these factors and sports prizes could be a garment in formulating policies for promoting sports success. Thus, this study used cross-sectional data analysis to investigate such claims based on the recent Olympic Games of Rio 2016 from 207 countries with more than 11,000 athletes on 306 events in 28 different sports by employing Quantile Regression and Tobit Regression models. The findings revealed that inflation rate in moderate performed countries; economically active population in low, moderate, high, and very high performed countries; and countries' income classification in low, moderate, high, and very high performed countries are influencing the countries medal ranking performance in the Olympic Games. Furthermore, countries with high temperatures are not likely to do well in the games. However, the size of a country's GDP level, corruption ranking level, the number of athletes, and the topographical nature of a country have no impact on the countries medal ranking performance in the Olympic Games.