ArticleBehavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland)2026
From Digital Engagement to Physical Activity: A Four-Wave Test of Behavioral Spillover in Online Fitness Communities.
Article in Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Continued use of fitness technology is often treated as a prerequisite for health behavior change, yet platform engagement and behavioral regulation may operate through different mechanisms. This four-wave panel study tested whether an engagement pathway in online fitness communities extends across the digital-physical boundary. After a priori quality screening, 506 Chinese adults who had used the community functions of a smart fitness platform, application, or wearable device within the previous three months and had access to a community activity venue were retained at T1, with 417 at T2, 377 at T3, and 394 at the outcome-only T4 wave. A unified full-information maximum-likelihood path system adjusted for prior outcomes and demographics and used 2000 participant-level bootstrap resamples. Perceived interaction at T1 predicted social presence (β = 0.297), flow (β = 0.355), and belonging (β = 0.245) at T2, and all three independently predicted continuance intention at T3 (βs = 0.203-0.302). Continuance intention is the intention to keep using the community, not observed use. It showed no detectable association with physical activity at T4 once prior activity was controlled (β = 0.016, 95% CI [-0.061, 0.082]), and the serial indirect effects were likewise undetectable. This did not follow from conditioning on the strong autoregressive path: the zero-order correlation between continuance intention and later activity was 0.068, while associations along the hypothesized within-platform chain ranged from 0.218 to 0.563. Missing-data, complete-case, log-transformed, and inverse-probability-weighted specifications converged. Exploratory equivalence testing rendered standardized effects of ±0.10 or larger implausible (
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