Nonprofit Cost-Sharing Outdoor Activity Groups in China: Research Progress, Critical Examination, and Future Prospects

Maohui Cheng; Xin  Zhang

doi:10.54691/mtpqeh85

Authors

Maohui Cheng
Xin Zhang

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54691/mtpqeh85

Keywords:

Outdoor sport; nonprofit sport organization; cost sharing; self-organized sport; outdoor leadership; risk governance; China.

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the popularization, social networking, and digitalization of outdoor sport, nonprofit “AA” groups—an indigenous Chinese form of self-organized outdoor participation in which members share activity-related costs—have increasingly become an organizational form situated between individualized sport participation and formal sport organizations. This review synthesizes scholarship on nonprofit sport organizations, self-organized mass sport groups, cost-sharing outdoor activities, outdoor sport participants, and outdoor leaders. It maps the literature across five interconnected domains: organizational operation, legal responsibility and risk governance, member participation, leadership, and regional context. Chinese scholarship is strongly problem-oriented, focusing particularly on organizational legitimacy, duties of care, accident liability, leader competencies, and regional outdoor resources. International scholarship provides complementary perspectives on organizational effectiveness, member identification, collective leadership, volunteer governance, outdoor education, and experiential learning. Nevertheless, the literature remains constrained by ambiguous conceptual boundaries, fragmented research objects, insufficient attention to ordinary participants, limited micro-level regional evidence, and weak theoretical integration. Future research should conceptualize nonprofit cost-sharing outdoor groups as social action systems sustained by resources, collective goals, member integration, and shared values, while paying greater attention to the nonprofit–commercial boundary, digital-platform governance, leader–participant responsibility, shared risk governance, and place-specific conditions. Such an agenda may shift the field from isolated explanations of risk toward a more integrated understanding of organizational functioning.

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