Social media's effect on fitness behavior intention: Perceived value as a mediator

Abstract

We investigated potential mechanisms that could explain the relationship between social media and fitness behavior intention by surveying 410 undergraduate students from four Chinese public universities. The results show that perceived usefulness and the content quality, interactive relationships, and opinion leaders components of social media all had significant positive effects on the perceived value of these platforms. However, contrary to our expectations, perceived ease of use and the account influence component of social media had no significant impact on perceived value. Finally, perceived value had a positive correlation with revisit intention, fitness behavior intention, and recommendation intention. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.