Pathways of microclimate effects on exercise thermal comfort in professional football stadiums: A case study in cold regions of China

Outdoor exercise thermal comfort (ETC) is a key determinant of athletes’ performance and the experience of highly involved spectators. Existing studies primarily emphasize single-variable direct effects, whereas indirect pathways arising from interactions among multiple factors require further investigation. Aiming to explore both direct and indirect pathways of ETC in football settings, this research first conducted a critical review of thermal comfort literature to identify the key latent constructs and outcome variables. Subsequently, field measurements and questionnaire surveys were conducted in football stadium settings, resulting in 848 valid observations. After measurement reliability and validity were confirmed, four Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) structural models were estimated for winter and summer athletes and spectators. Measurement Invariance of Composite Models (MICOM) was applied to assess measurement invariance across groups, permutation-based Multi-Group Analysis (MGA) was used to compare path coefficients across groups, and robustness was checked via within-group sensitivity analyses. The models exhibited substantial explained variance and predictive relevance within the studied context, with coefficient of determination (R²) values ranging from 0.784 to 0.926. Among the direct effects influencing ETC, the relative importance followed the order: environmental characteristics (EC) > thermal perception (TP) > psychological characteristics (PC). The mediating effect of perceptual constructs between EC and ETC was stronger for spectators (winter: −0.086; summer: 0.151) and weaker for athletes (winter: −0.022; summer: 0.069). The moderating effects of PC were significant across all models. These findings provide insights into the underlying pathways influencing ETC.