A study on the sustainable development of competitive sports training efficiency in China

Abstract

With the orientation of promoting a new type of competitive sports economic form that is more unified in terms of fairness and efficiency and improving the efficiency of optimal resource allocation in the context of digital economy, we evaluate the input-output efficiency of competitive sports in China and promote the sustainable development of competitive sports. Data envelopment analysis was used to empirically analyze the five input indicators of human, financial, and material inputs to Chinese competitive sports and the medal point indicators of the outputs of international sports events and China’s highest level competitions held during the five-year period. Results verify: 1) China’s provincial competitive sports training efficiency showed a development trend of eastern > central > western regions, with a national comprehensive efficiency of 0.645, and 10 provinces (municipalities and districts) reaching DEA effectiveness. 2) The standard deviation of the national efficiency is only 0.277, and there are large differences in the input-output efficiency of competitive sports in various provinces, with obvious regional imbalances. 3) The national mean of pure technical efficiency (PTE) of competitive sports inputs is much smaller than the mean of scale efficiency (SE), and 48.3% of provinces show the trend of increasing returns to scale. The study concludes that there is an “non-equilibrium” in the input-output benefits of competitive sports in China. At this stage, China should pay attention to the efficiency of resource allocation in competitive sports, conduct heterogeneous analysis for the phenomenon of benefit imbalance, and reduce the inter-regional differences in the benefits of competitive sports training.