Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Oct 27, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 27, 2018 - Dec 22, 2018
Date Accepted: Jul 28, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
How Mobile Apps Promote Physical Activity: Structural Equation Models with Mediating Effects
ABSTRACT
Background:
Physical inactivity is a risk factor for chronic non-communicable diseases. Insufficient physical activity has become an important public health problem worldwide. As mobile applications (apps) have rapidly developed, physical activity apps have the potential to improve the level of physical activity among populations.
Objective:
This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of physical activity apps as an intervention on the level of physical activity among college students.
Methods:
An online questionnaire was used to survey college students in Beijing from December 27, 2017 to January 5, 2018. The questionnaire consisted of five parts: the use of physical activity apps, sports habits, social support, self-efficacy, and social demographic information.
Results:
Among the 1,245 participants, 384 college students (30.8%) used physical activity apps (in the past month). Among them, 191 students (49.7%) gained new friends via the app. College students who used physical activity apps had a higher level of physical activity, higher social support scores, and higher self-efficacy scores (P <0.001) compared with those who did not use such apps. The use of physical activity apps had a significant effect on the mediating effect of physical activity level through social support (β = 0.126, P <0.001) and self-efficacy (β = 0.294, P <0.001). Sex played an important role in app use, self-efficacy, and physical activity in the mediation model; male users had more time consumption for physical activity and higher self-efficacy scores (P <0.001).
Conclusions:
This study focused on college students in Beijing and found that the use of physical activity apps can improve the level of physical activity. This effect is mainly through the mediation effect of social support and self-efficacy more than the direct effect of the physical activity apps. Using physical activity apps can improve the social support level and self-efficacy score, and then improve the level of physical activity.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.