Configurational Pathways to Effective Rural Elderly Sports Participation: A Necessity and Sufficiency Analysis Using NCA and QCA

Huan Feng¹彦瑾 李²XiaoYi Wang³QingChuan Wang⁴Zhihua Wang^1*

• ¹Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
• ²Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China
• ³Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, China
• ⁴Chengdu Sport University, Chengdu, China

Background: Rural elderly populations face significant sports participation disparities compared to urban areas. Traditional linear analytical approaches fail to capture the complex configurational nature of effective public service delivery in rural contexts, requiring sophisticated methodological approaches accommodating multiple pathways to effectiveness. Methods: This study employed Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to examine village-level conditions promoting effective rural elderly sports participation in China. Data were collected from 156 villages across three regional contexts using multi-stage stratified sampling. Seven conditions were analyzed: Leadership Support, Planning Systems, Specialized Personnel, Funding Allocation, Facility Infrastructure, Organizational Capacity, and Activity Implementation. NCA identified necessary conditions using CE-FDH and CR-FDH techniques, while crisp-set QCA revealed sufficient configurational pathways. Results: NCA revealed no universally necessary conditions, indicating rural communities can achieve success through multiple alternative pathways without specific prerequisites. QCA identified six distinct sufficient configurations with solution consistency of 0.886 and coverage of 0.43, demonstrating equifinality in rural governance. Specialized Personnel emerged as the only condition present across all pathways (100% frequency), while Leadership Support appeared in five of six solutions (83.3% frequency). Configurations ranged from governance-focused approaches emphasizing leadership coordination to resource-intensive models integrating formal planning and funding. One pathway achieved effectiveness without traditional leadership support, suggesting institutional systems can substitute for individual leadership commitment. Conclusions: The absence of necessary conditions challenges policy frameworks assuming uniform implementation requirements and supports flexible, context-responsive governance models. Multiple sufficient pathways indicate effective rural development strategies should accommodate diverse approaches rather than prescriptive solutions. Specialized personnel represents a fundamental requirement across all configurations, while frequent "don't care" conditions reveal significant substitutability among governance arrangements. These findings contribute to configurational methodology applications in public administration and provide practical guidance for adaptive rural development policy tailored to local conditions.