An established strand of economic literature focuses on beneficial impact of relational goods in societal development. In particular, a well-known positive correlation between happiness of individuals and relational goods is commonly recognized. At the same time, it appears to be that there is also an important linkage between relational goods and economic development through the channel of a superior trustworthiness in an economic system. Of course, there are different types of relational goods. In particular, this paper focuses on sport participation. What is the broad impact of sport participation and sport activities in a society? Of course, given the nature of sport as relational good the impact of sport participation on social well-being is expected to be – broadly speaking - beneficial.

            However, two different approaches can be used. On one hand, it can be stated that sport participation deters phenomena of social deviance as – among others - crime and juvenile violence. In such a case, the beneficial impact is somehow indirect. On other hand, it can be stated that sport participation affects beneficially economic and societal development through (1) mental and physical wellness and (2) team-thinking of individuals and development of social trustworthiness. This would be a direct beneficial impact for society. However, needless to say, stating that sport participation is not detrimental for society is not equivalent to saying that sport participation is surely beneficial for society. Therefore, to study the impact of sport participation on societal and individual well-being the analysis must be necessarily twofold. This paper is actually intended to analyse both aspects.

            First, this paper is intended to address the question: Is sport participation detrimental for society? Hence, the first aim of this paper is tackling this crucial point by studying empirically whether or not there is a relationship between sport participation and crime. In such a context, crime is assumed to be a good proxy for social deviance. Of course, given the nature of sport as relational good the impact of sport participation on crime is expected to be negative. As noted above, in fact, sport like other ‘relational goods’ is supposed to produce a positive externality which enters positively the utility function of individuals. Therefore, the overall benefit to society is commonly supposed to be positive. However, the association is not so clear when considering different types of crime. For example, if we can consider the negative association between individual crime and sport predictable, we cannot do the same with organised crime and juvenile gangs’ phenomenon. In many cases, for example, juvenile crime and violence emerge in the presence of juvenile groups clustered around sport participation identity. Narratives of hooliganism sadly confirm this. Moreover, other studies pointed out associations between sports and increased problem behavior. For example, young athletes have higher levels of alcohol use, binge drinking and an increased tendency to be involved in physical fights than non-athletes.

            More interesting perhaps is also the empirical investigation of a possible interaction between sport participation and other factors as (1) GDP per capita as proxy of socio-economic development; (2) level of education. Albeit questionable, GDP per capita, in particular, has always been used as measure of socio-economic development and therefore, it would be expected to capture the opportunity cost of being involved in crime activities. Moreover, in many previous works, the empirical evidence about the relationship between crime participation and GDP per capita is not conclusive. In simpler words, the latter factors can be expected either to reinforce or forestall any negative association of sport participation on different types of crime.  

            As noted above, studying whether or not sport participation is negatively associated with social deviance (proxied by crime) is not equivalent to studying any beneficial impact on development. Eventually, in a second section this paper analyses the role of sport participation in promoting economic well-being, with a particular focus on productivity. In fact, it is commonly recognized that higher productivity can foster a higher economic growth. In particular, two different measures of productivity are used: (1) added value; (2) labour productivity in small and medium firms.  

            The approach of this work is intrinsically empirical. A panel dataset have been constructed for the twenty Italian regions over the period 1997-2003. The paper can be ideally split into two macro-sections. In a first section, the impact of sport participation on different type of crimes will be estimated. In a second section the impact of sport participation on productivity and economic growth is estimated. Eventually a summary of findings and a related discussion is presented.