Changes in the Type of Sports Activity Due to COVID-19: Hypochondriasis and the Intention of Continuous Participation in Sports

This study focused on empirically analyzing sport activity participants’ perceptions of hypochondriasis caused by fear of infection and changes in continuous participatory behavior patterns. To this end, a comparative analysis was conducted with a focus on the forms of participation and age of sport activity participants. For the final comparative analysis, a 2 × 3 factorial multivariate analysis of variance was conducted after confirming the validity and reliability of data based on 229 questionnaires collected from healthy respondents who have never been infected with COVID-19. The results showed statistically significant differences between worry about illness, which is a subscale of hypochondriasis, disease phobia, thanatophobia, and intent to continue according to age. Statistically significant differences were also found when considering the type of sport for worry about illness, which is a subscale of hypochondriasis, disease phobia, symptom preoccupation, and intent to continue. Furthermore, interaction effects between the two independent variables, i.e., age and type of sport, were found for disease phobia, a subscale of hypochondriasis, and thanatophobia. In summary, age and type of sport, which are important factors for the COVID-19 infection and symptoms, were found to affect the sport activity patterns. These results proved that COVID-19 may have caused the participants to have different perceptions depending on their characteristics and change their form of continuous participation. These findings will provide useful data for predicting the perception and behavioral patterns of sports participants if diseases like COVID-19 occur in the future. They also show how to live a healthy life through exercise.