European Journal for Sport and Society 2009, 6 (1), 51-59 Determinants of sport participation in the European Union

Abstract: With regard to sport participation in Europe, there are many national studies which are difficult to compare because of different ways of operationalizing sport participation and different methods of analysis and statistical procedures. The aim of this paper is to check which determinants influence sport participation in which way. With the help of data from the Eurobarometer 2004, regression analyses are carried out (1) for the whole European Union and (2) for all 25 member states separately. The advantage of these data is that they contain information about all 25 member states and, thus, results concerning sport participation can be compared. In the European model, age, relationship, children and occupation negatively affect sport participation, while education years and town size have a significant positive influence on sport participation. The country-specific regression models show in some aspects different determinants of sport participation. Consequently, political advice with regard to the inclusion in the sport system has to refer to these peculiarities of sport participation in the different European countries