Relationship between the athlete’s environment and sports performance with regard to psychological factors

Sports performance is influenced by several factors. Psychological factors are a main contributor to sports performance, but are themselves influenced by the athlete’s environment, e.g., social environment, financial situation, and so on. It is therefore necessary to assess the influence of environmental factors on competitive performance, which is likely to occur through psychological mechanisms. To this purpose, 592 athletes between 13 and 65 years of age (28.04 ± 9.15, 357 female, 204 male, 2 of unspecified gender) at various performance levels were surveyed using a set of questionnaires (MIPS, CSAI, GSE, TDEQ5 and additional questions) regarding their psychological and competitive performance as well as their perceptions of their social situation and social environment. Differences in environmental and psychological factors were found between different athlete groups, e.g. according to gender (e. g. self-efficacy being higher in male participants, p ≤ .010, η = .114), handedness (e. g. left-handers perceiving their social surroundings as more perfectionistic), and sport involved (e. g. higher values for CSAI worry in team sports, p ≤ .038, η = .009). Connections between performance and several environmental factors (e.g., highest competitive level and family, p ≤ .017, r = -.102) and intercorrelations among psychological scales, such as MIPS and CSAI, were also found. Self-efficacy correlated with highest competitive level in the current main sport ( p ≤ .006, r = -.120) as well as CSAI worry ( p ≤ .002, r = -.138), thus showing a probable effect of expected self-efficacy and CSAI worry on sports performance, while self-efficacy itself correlated with and was therefore most probably influenced by several environmental factors, for instance social environment ( p ≤ .001, r = -.170), finances ( p ≤ .001, r = -.206) and sleep quality ( p ≤ .001, r = -.252), amongst others, and CSAI worry was influenced by perfectionism of the environment (e. g. MIPS coach, p ≤ .001, r = -.3420). Therefore, it can be said that sports performance is most likely influenced by a set of environmental factors (e.g., family, social surroundings, perfectionism of family, coach, and team) via psychological factors such as self-efficacy and CSAI. Psychological performance itself is a factor that influences sports performance, but it is most likely also the link through which environmental factors influence sports performance.