Associations between fitness social media exposure and exercise adherence: dual pathways via parasocial relationships and body image pressure.

Introduction: Although fitness social media has emerged as a primary source of exercise information and health advice, the mechanisms linking such exposure to exercise adherence remain poorly understood. This study develops and tests a dual-pathway framework examining how fitness social media exposure is associated with exercise adherence among recent content consumers. Methods: Cross-sectional data from 575 respondents were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to evaluate variable net effects, complemented by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify multi-condition configurations associated with high exercise adherence. Results: Fitness social media exposure was associated with parallel positive and negative psychological processes, but the positive pathway showed substantially greater explanatory power. Specifically, media exposure was significantly and positively associated with both parasocial relationships and physical appearance comparison. The positive pathway through parasocial relationships, exercise self-efficacy, and exercise identity was fully supported, whereas the negative pathway through body image pressure was only partially supported, as the effect of body surveillance on social physique anxiety was non-significant. Discussion: Exercise self-efficacy and exercise identity emerged as key proximal variables in the net-effect model and as stable core conditions in configurations associated with high exercise adherence. These findings suggest that relational and self-regulatory mechanisms are central to understanding exercise adherence among fitness content consumers and may outweigh the negative role of appearance pressure.