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This article presents an analytical framework for understanding and studying the value structures that govern participation in sport. We combine insights from a Norwegian Monitor survey with existential philosophical reasoning to present an empirically based value structure and discern three fundamental ways of engaging in sport: being, having and belonging. We argue that distinguishing between these modes of engagement can contribute to describing, analysing and navigating in the variety of ways that participants engage in sport. Using friluftsliv and football as illustrative cases, we analyse how these existential dimensions can be prevalent in different forms of participation. Towards the end of the article, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of our approach, and how the existential dimensions may relate and intertwine in practice.
Aggerholm et al. (2020) studied this question.