Comparing habit-behaviour relationships for organised versus leisure time physical activity

Abstract

Evidence shows that people with strong physical activity habits tend to engage in more physical activity than those with weaker habits, but little is known about how habit influences specific types of physical activity. This study aimed to test whether mean level of habit strength and magnitude of the habit strength – behaviour association differed as a function of physical activity modality. Participants (N = 120; M age = 25 years, 75% female) who reported engaging in organised sport separately reported their habit strength for organised sport and leisure time physical activity as well as the time they spent engaging in these physical activity behaviours. Means comparisons and multilevel modelling revealed that people had significantly stronger habit for organised sport than for leisure time physical activity. Crucially, no significant difference was found in the magnitude of the sport-habit and leisure-habit link. Post-hoc analyses revealed that habit was stronger for team sport compared to individual sport, but that there was no significant difference in sport-habit association between team and individual sports. Research should therefore focus on identifying the characteristics of team sports-based activity that are particularly conducive to habit formation as a precursor to developing interventions to promote performance of leisure time activity in a way that would attain such characteristics.

Keywords

• exercise; motivation; automaticity; physical activity modalities