Sports industry upgrading is crucial support for building a strong sports nation, but it faces complex challenges due to the intertwined effects of institutional logic conflicts and digital economy development. Institutional logic conflicts refer to the inherent tensions between competitive sports logic, which prioritizes elite performance and national prestige, and sports-for-all logic, which emphasizes mass participation and public health. These conflicting logics constrain sports industry upgrading through resource allocation distortion, organizational goal divergence, and insufficient innovation motivation. Based on panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2015-2023, this study employs spatial Durbin models and mediation effect models to empirically examine the impact mechanisms of digital economy empowerment on sports industry upgrading against the backdrop of institutional logic conflicts. The findings reveal: institutional logic conflicts significantly inhibit sports industry upgrading through three channels - resource allocation distortion, organizational goal divergence, and insufficient innovation motivation, with a negative impact coefficient of 0.286; digital economy empowerment not only directly promotes industry upgrading (coefficient 0.428), but also effectively mitigates the negative impact of institutional logic conflicts (interaction term coefficient 0.267); policy response plays a 28.4% mediating role in the digital economy empowerment process, while regional coordinated development level positively moderates this mediating effect; sports industry upgrading exhibits significant spatial agglomeration and spillover effects, with a spatial autocorrelation coefficient reaching 0.328. The study constructs an integrated theoretical framework linking institutional theory, digital economy theory, policy analysis theory, and spatial economics theory through a logical chain: institutional conflicts create constraints, digital technologies provide solutions, policy responses facilitate implementation, and regional coordination amplifies effects. The study reveals a new mechanism by which digital technology reshapes the institutional environment of traditional industries, providing a four-dimensional path of "institutional innovation-digital empowerment-policy response-regional coordination" for promoting high-quality development of the sports industry, offering important insights for deepening sports management system reform, accelerating digital transformation, and optimizing regional industrial layout. • Digital economy mitigates institutional conflicts’ inhibition on sports upgrading. • Policy response plays 28.4% mediating role in digital empowerment. • Regional coordination positively moderates policy’s mediating effect.
Qiao et al. (Wed,) studied this question.