Association between sports participation and psychological capital among college students: the moderating role of active-passive sports participation patterns

Objectives This study aimed to examine the association between sports participation and psychological capital (PsyCap) among college students and to assess whether this association varies between active and passive participation patterns. Methods Questionnaire data were collected from college students. Descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were performed using SPSS (version 26.0). The moderating role of participation pattern was assessed using Model 1 of the PROCESS macro, and separate partial correlation networks were estimated in R for the active, balanced, and passive groups to examine the conditional association between sports participation and four dimensions of PsyCap. Results Sports participation was significantly and positively associated with PsyCap. Using the active participation pattern as the reference group, the interaction term between sports participation and the passive pattern reached statistical significance ( β = −0.186, 95% CI [−0.291, −0.080]), indicating that the positive association between sports participation and PsyCap was weaker in the passive group relative to the active group. Conversely, the interaction between sports participation and the balanced pattern failed to reach statistical significance ( β = −0.062, 95% CI [−0.15, 0.026]). In the network analysis, self-efficacy exhibited the strongest estimated conditional association with sports participation across all three subgroup networks. Conclusion Sports participation was positively associated with PsyCap, and the strength of this association varied based on participation pattern, particularly between the active and passive groups. These findings suggest that how students engage in sports may be relevant to the association between sports participation and PsyCap.