The impact of the sports industry on the development of the health industry: an exploration of mediating and threshold effects

Introduction The sports and health industries play a crucial role in fulfilling individuals' aspirations for an enhanced quality of life and in supporting the development of a Healthy China. Methods To explore the impact mechanism of the sports industry (SID) on the development of the health industry (HID), this study employed a rigorous empirical framework utilizing panel data from 30 provinces in China over the period 2014–2023. Using fixed-effects and mediation-effect models, this study examined the influence mechanism and identified the key pathways through which the sports industry impacts the development of the health industry. Results The results demonstrate that the sports industry positively influences the development of the health industry. This conclusion remains robust across a series of robustness tests. The heterogeneous analysis reveals regional variation in the impact of the sports industry on the health industry development. Among the regions, the sports industry has the strongest promotional effect on health industry's development in the western regions, followed by the eastern and central regions. Conversely, the impact in the northeastern regions is relatively negligible. Mediation effect analysis reveals that the sports industry can effectively stimulate the development of the health industry by significantly increasing R&D intensity. Furthermore, testing the threshold effect indicates that the impact of the sports industry on the health industry exhibits a double threshold and non-linear diminishing marginal effects. Discussion This study contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the sports industry's impact on the health industry. Based on these findings, we proposed a series of targeted recommendations.