Against the backdrop of intensified social atomization and the promotion of national fitness, outdoor sports communities have become a new type of leisure and social carrier in contemporary times, with weak relationships as the link. This article adopts the research method of online ethnography, relying on weak relationship theory and interactive ritual chain theory, selects folk outdoor sports communities as research samples, and combines online observation and offline participatory observation to explore their social value and cohesion formation mechanism. Research has shown that outdoor sports communities have multidimensional social value at the individual, community, and social levels. They can achieve functions such as emotional stress relief, interpersonal expansion, and resource sharing, and have a positive effect on optimizing social relationships and empowering sports, culture, and tourism; Community cohesion is generated by the coupling of interest consensus, two-way interaction, institutional norms, cultural identity, and external environment, presenting an evolutionary feature from shallow aggregation to deep belonging. This study clarifies the operational logic of weak relationship leisure communities, enriches the research results of outdoor sports sociology, and provides theoretical reference for the standardized and long-term development of outdoor sports communities and the optimization of modern folk social ecology.

Zhaoxi Li, Xiao Li. The Social Value and Cohesion Formation Mechanism of Outdoor Sports Communities: Investigation Based on Online Ethnography. Frontiers in Sport Research (2026), Vol. 8, Issue 3: 15-20. https://doi.org/10.25236/FSR.2026.080303.

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