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exercise-behavior

How does fitness social media shape exercise?

Xiao X, Huang D, Li G · Frontiers in psychology · 2025

Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC

In 425 exercisers, fitness social media use predicted exercise behavior directly and via a motivation→intention chain (~34% of the total effect indirect).

Key findings

Fitness social media significantly predicted intrinsic motivation (β=0.396), intention (β=0.254), and behavior (β=0.295). Indirect effects totaled 33.55% of the total effect (motivation 18.57%, intention 10.75%, chain 4.25%).

Methodology

Ran an April 2025 online snowball survey of active social-media users (n=425), measured fitness social media use, intrinsic motivation, exercise intention, and behavior, then tested a chained mediation SEM with 5,000 bootstrap resamples.

Limitations

Cross-sectional self-report cannot prove causation; snowball sampling of regular exercisers limits generalizability to sedentary or offline populations.

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