When sport becomes social: how exercise and live spectatorship are linked to happiness through neighborhood connections.

Introduction: Sport is often understood as a health behavior associated with happiness through physical activity and psychological regulation. However, less is known about the social pathways connecting different forms of sport involvement with happiness. This study examined the associations of structured exercise participation (SEP) and live sports spectatorship (LSS) with happiness and investigated the mediating role of neighborhood social capital (NSC). Methods: Data were drawn from 5,451 respondents in the 2023 Chinese General Social Survey. OLS regression was used as the main analytical approach, ordered logistic regression was conducted as a robustness check, and bootstrap mediation analysis was used to estimate the indirect, direct, and total associations of SEP and LSS with happiness through NSC. Results: Both SEP and LSS were positively associated with happiness after adjustment for demographic, socioeconomic, health-related, and residential characteristics. The ordered logistic models produced substantively consistent results. Bootstrap analysis showed significant positive indirect associations through NSC for both SEP and LSS. For SEP, the direct association remained statistically significant after NSC was included. For LSS, the direct association was not statistically significant, whereas the indirect and total associations remained significant. Discussion: The findings suggest that sport involvement is associated with happiness not only through active physical participation or spectator-based leisure, but also through neighborhood social connections and everyday social embeddedness. SEP appears to be linked to happiness through both direct and socially mediated pathways, whereas the association of LSS with happiness appears to operate primarily through NSC. Given the cross-sectional design, these findings should be interpreted as associations rather than causal effects.