Sport and Social Capital Formation

Do Sports Clubs Contribute to the Accumulation of Regional Social Capital?

“…We chose the instrumental variables from a set of measures describing the number of sports facilities (in line with the subject literature) [ 7 , 20 ]. Based on the value of corrected F statistics proposed by Montiel Olea and Pflueger [ 41 ] and using the Stata ivreg2 [ 42 ] and weaktest [ 43 ] packages, we selected the following for measures: the number of multifunctional fields and the number of football stadiums (both related to the regional working age population).…”

“…As a result, subject to exclusion restriction, appraising causal relations was possible, as shown in Figure 1-i.e., it was possible to explain the changes taking place in SC as a result of the change in SA, resulting from changes in availability of sports infrastructure at the regional level, with the other exogenous variables measuring the local socio-economic development level that was controlled for. We chose the instrumental variables from a set of measures describing the number of sports facilities (in line with the subject literature) [7,20]. Based on the value of corrected F statistics proposed by Montiel Olea and Pflueger [41] and using the Stata ivreg2 [42] and weaktest [43] packages, we selected the following for measures: the number of multifunctional fields and the number of football stadiums (both related to the regional working age population).…”

“…The list of proposed variables reflects both empirical results mentioned above and theoretical considerations, as discussed by Pawlowski and Schüttoff [7]. In particular, the associational character of sports (especially within sports clubs or team disciplines) is important, in some cases resulting in being exposed to persons from different groups across society, thus contributing to the adoption of cooperative norms, building trust or bridging to further parts of the social networks, which, in turn, could also result in fostered associational behaviour or greater engagement in the sharing economy.…”

“…Among them, Claridge [6] lists: trust, norms and principles defining social activities, types of social interaction and dimensions of social networks, group activities, volunteerism, daily interactions with other people, neighbourly relations and sense of community. Pawlowski and Schüttoff discuss the relation between sports and SC using four-dimensional framework: personal relationships, social network support, civic engagement and trust and cooperative norms, intersected with two types of SC accumulation-vertical (reflecting bridging SC) and horizontal (reflecting bonding SC) [7]. It is problematic to directly measure indicators important for SC such as trust or truthfulness.…”

“…The aim of our work is, therefore, to analyse how SA contributes to SC accumulation in Poland at the regional level, capturing SC dimensions that are not observable on an individual level. This is also interesting in the context of the discussion of whether sport can contribute to SC rather in the bonding form, or also a bridging one [7], with greater potential for having a general, societal scale of impact.…”