Exploring the moderating effects of anticipated effort on real-time physical activity behaviour: An ecological momentary assessment study

Abstract

Introduction Regular physical activity (PA) provides many positive physical and mental health outcomes. Despite the well-known benefits of PA, most Canadian adults are not meeting current 24-hour Canadian movement guidelines (Ross et al., 2020). According to the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991), intention is theorized as a direct predictor of behaviour. Yet, a notable intention-behaviour gap exists where people fail to translate PA intention to PA behaviours. Newer dual process theories such as The Theory of Effort Minimization in Physical Activity (TEMPA; Cheval & Boisgontier, 2021) include consideration for the dynamic nature of people’s physical and psychological states. The TEMPA also further includes consideration for people’s evolved automatic tendencies to minimize physical effort. Prior research examining the effects of effort on PA behaviour has relied on cross sectional or single-timepoint experimental designs that lack ecological validity. Furthermore, previous research does not distinguish effort to prepare to engage in PA from effort to engage in PA. The present study leveraged ecological momentary assessment (EMA), a novel data capturing technique aimed to maximize ecological validity through repeated sampling of participants in real-time and real-world contexts. Objective and Hypothesis The objective of this study is to examine the effects of intention on PA behaviour, the effects of anticipated effort to prepare to engage in PA on PA behaviour, and the moderating effects of anticipated effort to prepare to engage in physical activity on the intention-behaviour relationship. It is hypothesized that intention will positively predict PA behaviour, that anticipated effort to prepare to engage in PA will negatively predict PA behaviour, and that anticipated effort to prepare to engage in PA will moderate the intention-behaviour relationship in that as anticipated effort increases, the intention-behaviour gap widens. Methods Emerging adults (N=124; mean age = 22.47 years) were recruited and completed EMA surveys four times daily for seven days, reporting PA intention and anticipated effort to prepare to engage in PA. Participants wore Fitbit Versa 4 PA monitoring devices on their non-dominant wrist to passively measure PA behaviour as MVPA minutes 120-min epoch following each survey. Multilevel mixed-effects models were conducted, and within-person and between-person effects were disaggregated to test the hypotheses. Results An intention-to-behaviour gap of 41.5% was observed over the duration of the study. Results showed that intention positively predicted PA behaviour and anticipated effort to prepare to engage in PA negatively predicted PA behaviour. Furthermore, within-person and between-person effects of anticipated effort were significant in moderating the intention-behaviour relationship. Within-person effects moderated the intention-behavoiur relationship in that as participants reported anticipated effort higher than their own average, the intention-behaviour relationship was weaker. Against hypotheses, the intention-behaviour relationship was stronger for participants reporting higher average anticipated effort compared to others. Conclusion These findings suggest that anticipated effort is a dynamic construct capable of predicting PA behaviour and moderating the intention-behaviour relationship in real-time and in real-world environments. While anticipated effort to prepare to engage in PA remains to be a validated construct, it remains a promising target for future research targeting PA behaviour change.