2 | 49 A new life stage, a new sport activity? availability and social contacts resulting from the life events experienced. First, from a resource perspective, we can state that having enough free time is essential for participation in sport activities (Gershuny, 2000; Schor, 1991). Individuals with little leisure time quite simply experience greater time limitations, meaning that they are less likely to participate in time-consuming leisure activities (Kraaykamp et al., 2009). In this regard, it is important to recognise that people may struggle with competition between various activities, and as leisure activities are generally seen as less obligatory, they are easier to cut back on when more attention is required for higher priorities, such as tasks related to work and family (Kraaykamp et al., 2009). Indeed, nonsport participants often identify “insufficient time” as one a primary reason for not (or no longer) practising sport (European Commission, 2014). Although earlier research found this to be partly a matter of priority-setting (Breedveld & Mulleneers, 2011), it also showed that time constrains have a negative effect on actual sport participation and time spend taking part in sport (Breedveld & Mulleneers, 2011; Ruseski et al., 2011). Changes in the availability of temporal resources as a result of major life events might therefore explain changes in sport participation. Second, social resources may influence sport activity. Members of a person’s social network might stimulate them to start a new sport, but could inhibit them from doing so as well (Kraaykamp et al., 2013). This social environment stimulus is related, among other things, to the sportive “habitus”, corresponding to social norm perceptions (e.g., gender and ethnicity norms) with regard to sport participation (Elling & Claringbould, 2005; Stuij, 2013). Furthermore, sport offers good opportunities for building up new social resources (Putnam, 1995; Seippel, 2006). A person’s desire, requirement and need to gain access to social resources via sport participation will depend in part on the degree that they already have an extensive social network. Changes in the social network could be triggered by important life events, which may therefore be able to explain changes in an individual’s sport participation. When someone does start a sport activity, it is also relevant to ask in what setting he or she does so: in a sport club, which may or may not include participation in competitions, at a commercial fitness centre, via some other type of formal association such as school, work or a community centre, or on an informal basis such as with friends or individually. For those looking to start a sport, these various organisational forms may rival with one another
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