Supporting Employees’ Participation in Sports: Statistical and Sociological Study

Abstract

The article reflects results of empirical analysis of sport incentives for working adults in Russia. The study uses data from a small, but according to the authors, representative sample (2208 employees) of Russian adults’ attitudes towards their health and quality of medical care in Russian Federation. The survey was initiated by the National Research University Higher School of Economics in 2017, before the start of COVID-19 pandemic, which for a certain period disrupted the employees’ measures promoting sports for their workers. However, the relevance of the study has been fully preserved. The authors not just give a snapshot of sport-promoting measures adopted by Russian enterprises, but also justify the methodology for statistical analysis of a healthy lifestyle policies provided by employers to their employees.The paper reports the main parameters and the content of the population survey used in the study; describes main sport participation indicators and its’ determinants; presents estimates of factors attributed to sport participation among working adults. More specifically, the authors study the stimulating effect of two popular measures to encourage sport participation in Russian enterprises: providing access to sport infrastructure at the worksites and subsidies for practicing sport in sport centers.Using descriptive and econometric analyzes, the authors investigate the association between sport-encouraging measures and working adults sporting activity, estimate statistical significance of this relationship. In order to concretize and deepen the empirical analysis of sport participation among working adults, the authors adjust their analyses by adding such respondents’ characteristics as gender, age, health status, smoking status, education, type of work and place of residency.The study shows that probability of sport participation is much higher for those who has access to sport infrastructure at their worksites (for both men and women). However, employers’ subsidies for sport activity outside working places is not associated with any increase in the probability of doing sports.