The tale of two dialectics : reconciling regulatory fit and self-determination theory in sustaining exercise motivation

Abstract

Promoting exercise is a major concern of health-related government agencies worldwide. Exploiting mediation statistical techniques to reconcile two important goal pursuit theories in the health education domain, regulatory fit theory and self-determination theory, the current work is an early foray in investigating how exercise may be motivated by way of people’s self-maintained volition towards using 3G mobile applications to complement their fitness regimes.

While there has been substantial research on the effects of regulatory fit on its audience, these experiments induce fit through hypothetical scenarios, limiting their usefulness to policy makers; findings necessitate that policy makers know beforehand the chronic trait levels of their audiences. Going against the vernacular in regulatory fit theory, this study interacted two non-trait factor manipulations with the practical goal of expanding the latitude of building creative campaigns with 3G mobile devices in mind.

Our study is a 2 (Message Framing: Eagerness vs. Vigilance) x 2 (Competitive Environment: Independent vs. Interdependent) between subjects full factorial experiment. This longitudinal field experiment involved 118 undergraduates from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) conducted over the duration of 10 days.

It was found that participants exercised the most when exposed to prevention-associated loss-framed messages in an interdependent competition setting. Furthermore, regulatory fit theory may account for motivation change in the short term but self-determination theory works better at explaining longer-term motivation sustenance.