Investigating the Sports Consumption Pattern of Urban and Rural Households in Iran: 2001 to 2016

One of the most important approaches of society to living and health standards is Investigating the consumption pattern and the trend of changes in household sports consumption.

This study was descriptive-analytical and due to the nature of the issue, data collection on household sports expenditures was done in 7 groups using a16- year period documents taken from the Statistics Center and Central Bank of Iran websites. At first the data were obtained using descriptive statistics; then, they were summarized using tables and graphs; and then, with econometric methods, relative and real changes were calculated according to the price index in the above years. Finally, to eliminate the effects of inflation, its relative and real growth was calculated. Also, the Kolmogorov Smirnov test, paired t-test, and independent t-test was used at α = 0.05 with SPSS.

The results show that household sports expenditures in 2016 compared to 2001 had 95% real growth. Of the total sports expenditures, about 61% were related to urban households and the rest to rural households. Urban household per capita in 2016 had a significant decrease and negative growth but rural household sports per capita increased and had positive growth.

Lack of significant sports participation in Iran, increasing inflation shifting the share of important expenses for households, and increasing urbanization rates can be factors affecting the results. Unbridled inflation control, creating a culture and sports subsidies for sports facilities, can be a way in this direction in sports participation and consequently the expenses of more and more people in sports, which also leads to the economic growth of the sports industry.