{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,7]],"date-time":"2026-08-07T17:07:08Z","timestamp":1786122428594,"version":"build-2736575974"},"reference-count":63,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,7]],"date-time":"2026-08-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1786060800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Public Health"],"abstract":"<jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Introduction<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Broad social-capital measures may obscure the concrete relationships through which leisure-time exercise is organized. This study examined whether leisure-time exercise among Chinese adults is more strongly associated with friend gatherings than with neighborhood interaction, generalized trust, or perceived fairness.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>We pooled nine anonymous repeated cross-sectional waves of the Chinese General Social Survey from 2010 to 2023. Friend gatherings were treated as a proxy for friendship-oriented leisure socializing, not as direct evidence that respondents exercised with friends. Standardized OLS models included socioeconomic and demographic covariates, survey-year fixed effects, and harmonized province fixed effects.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      In the primary social-contrast model, friend gatherings showed the largest social-relational association with exercise (standardized beta = 0.149), exceeding the coefficients for neighborhood interaction, generalized trust, and perceived fairness (all coefficient-comparison\n                      <jats:italic>p<\/jats:italic>\n                      &amp;lt; 0.001). The association remained positive after adjustment for other leisure activities (beta = 0.081,\n                      <jats:italic>p<\/jats:italic>\n                      &amp;lt; 0.001), and robustness analyses supported the same bounded interpretation. Boundary analyses did not show that the pattern was reducible to venue\/gym exercise, and supplementary health-profile analyses did not identify exercise-friendship health synergy.\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Discussion<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Leisure-time exercise in China co-patterns with friendship-oriented leisure socializing more strongly than with broader social-capital attitudes or neighborhood contact. These findings are associative and do not establish causation or direct exercise companionship.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpubh.2026.1909863","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,7]],"date-time":"2026-08-07T10:10:11Z","timestamp":1786097411000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Association between friend gatherings and leisure-time exercise among Chinese adults"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"14","author":[{"given":"Wenfeng","family":"Zhu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Physical Education, Guizhou Normal University","place":["Guiyang, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yi","family":"Lin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Physical Education, Guizhou Normal University","place":["Guiyang, China"]},{"name":"College of Physical Education and Sport Science, Fujian Normal University","place":["Fuzhou, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Banghui","family":"Hong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Physical Education, Guizhou Normal University","place":["Guiyang, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1451","DOI":"10.1136\/bjsports-2020-102955","article-title":"World Health Organization 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour","volume":"54","author":"Bull","year":"2020","journal-title":"Br J Sports Med"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1311","DOI":"10.1016\/S0140-6736(16)30383-X","article-title":"and Lancet Physical Activity Series 2 Executive Committee. 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