A study on factors influencing digital sports participation among Chinese secondary school students based on explainable machine learning.

This study utilized data from 4,925 Hong Kong students in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to investigate factors influencing secondary school students' use of digital devices for sports participation and their threshold effects. Univariate analysis revealed significant differences in 16 variables including gender. Multilevel logistic regression identified five significant influencing factors (p < 0.05): academic performance, weekly physical education class days, household ICT resources, school ICT resources, and ICT social perception, which were incorporated as features in machine learning models. Through grid search with 5-fold cross-validation, we constructed and optimized four basic machine learning models (GNB, GBDT, KNN, and LR), then developed an ensemble stacking model using base models with AUC values exceeding 0.70. The best-performing stacking model was selected for interpretability analysis. These findings were supported by swarm plots consistent with the multilevel logistic regression results, confirming the reliability of the conclusions. Feature dependence plots further demonstrated threshold effects for specific variables. The study concludes that the entrenched cultural preference for academics over physical activity, weekly physical education class frequency (with two days as the threshold), household and school ICT resources (using high requirements as the threshold), and differences in ICT social perception significantly contribute to digital sports participation disparities among secondary students. Therefore, academically high-achieving students require particular attention in digital sports promotion. Schools should strive to increase the number of weekly physical education classes to at least two days or more, and actively configure equipment and environment to promote the digitalization of physical education. Furthermore, relevant departments can explore the social attributes of digital sports to enhance the possibility of secondary school students' participation in digital sports.