Sport Consumption Policy and Population Health:Quasi-Experimental Evidence from China

Can sport-consumption-oriented policy improve population health beyond its economic objectives? This study examines the health effects of China's National Sports Consumption Pilot City Policy, a city-level intervention designed to stimulate sport consumption, expand sport services, and improve the local sport market environment. Drawing on Grossman's health capital theory and longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies from 2010 to 2022, we implement a Difference-in-Differences design to estimate the policy's effects on residents' physical and mental health. The results show that the pilot policy significantly improves both health outcomes. These findings remain robust to event-study tests, propensity-score-matched DID specifications, placebo tests, alternative health measures, controls for potentially overlapping sport-venue policies, and adjustment for COVID-19-related city-year shocks. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the health gains are more pronounced among working-age adults and men for physical health, while mental-health effects are less heterogeneous across gender groups. Exploratory pathway analysis suggests that the policy may operate by expanding sport-related enterprises, stimulating household sport expenditure, and increasing exercise frequency and duration. The study contributes to interdisciplinary debates on sport policy, social policy, and population health by showing that sport consumption policy can function as a non-medical instrument for health capital accumulation and active health governance.