Abstract

Sports activities engagement is a sustainable lifestyle that can signal that individuals have the potential to become successful. The lifetime wellbeing that comes from participating in sports activities results in a general and global policy agenda encouraging populations to be part of it. However, prior studies have seldom tested how individuals’ characteristics influence their wellbeing through sports activities engagement from a lifetime perspective. In the current study, based on the conservation of resources and signaling theories, we suggest that with a high level of personal control and self-esteem, individuals will proactively maintain a good lifestyle by engaging in more sports activities. Moreover, this engagement is not only good for these individuals’ physical and mental health, but will also bring them much more life satisfaction than others. A large and representative sample with 12,686 participants collected from over 35-year surveys across different social classes in the United States is used to test our hypotheses. The results indicate that individuals’ characteristics will indeed influence their wellbeing, even after 40 years of age, by changing their sports activities engagement, which includes both light activities such as walking and vigorous activities such as running and swimming. Potential theoretical contributions and policy implications are also proposed.

Highlights

  • Health is a cherished resource that may bring many benefits to individuals

  • We find that personal control and self-esteem are positively related to sports activities engagement, and regularly engaging in sports activities can really improve individuals’ lifetime wellbeing, including health and life satisfaction

  • Hypothesis 3a suggests that self-esteem will positively affect sports activities engagement, and Hypothesis 3b proposes that sports activities engagement will mediate the relationship between self-esteem and lifetime wellbeing

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Summary

Introduction

Health is a cherished resource that may bring many benefits to individuals. A good health condition can serve as a signal, sending the market the message that such individuals can bring organizations more competitive advantages. Health is one of the most fundamental resources for individuals in terms of the simple absence of disease, and a more general wellbeing that includes physical, mental and social aspects [1,2]. Several studies found physical and psychological benefits of regularly engaging in sports activities [4,5,6]; for example, a study found that regularly engaging in sports activities can Symmetry 2020, 12, 854; doi:10.3390/sym12050854 www.mdpi.com/journal/symmetry

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