Continue to work out! How attaining physical goals influences individuals to continue using fitness apps

Abstract

Lack of physical activity is a growing global problem. Fitness apps can facilitate physical health improvement, but continuance usage intention is necessary to actually change physical health. Attaining physical goals is a main behavior change technique that is being used in the fitness apps. There is a gap in knowledge how attaining physical goals has an influence in the continuance intention of fitness apps. This research tries to close this gap by developing a conceptual model based on the post-acceptance model (PAM) that incorporates attaining physical goals and fitness app continuance intention among the variables fitness app satisfaction, habit, and technostress to explain the relationships. A survey was conducted (N=168) among Dutch fitness app users. A partial least square analysis was done to test the proposed model and find and interpret the strength of the relationships. The results show a significant positive relationship of attaining physical goals on fitness app satisfaction, that in turn has a positive relationship with fitness app continuance intention. Habit was also found to have a positive relationship with continuance intention. Next to that, the results show that technostress is not a significant moderator of the relationship between attaining physical goals and fitness app satisfaction.