Tracing How Normative Messages May Influence Physical Activity Intention

Abstract

Normative messages have been shown to increase intention to do physical activity. We traced how "positive" and "negative" normative messages influenced physical activity intention by comparing constructs of the model of goal-directed behavior with descriptive norms (MGDB + DNs) across control and treatment groups in an experiment. For this purpose, 16-24-year-old respondents (n = 1,200) in Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania were asked about their age, sex, and levels of physical activity before being exposed to positive and negative normative messages and completing a questionnaire with MGDB + DNs scales. Different MGDB + DNs constructs were influenced by the normative messages: compared with the control, the negative message group showed stronger attitudes (p = .003) and the positive message group showed higher positive anticipated emotions (p = .005). The positive message's effect is consistent with the literature on conformity to social norms. The negative message's effect lends itself to interpretations based on social identity and deviance regulation theories.Keywords: descriptive norms, exercise psychology, health behavior, model of goal-directed behavior, theory of planned behavior, young adults

Predicting Continued Participation in Government-Initiated Public Sports Clubs: The Role of Prior Knowledge and Awareness through Health Communications

“…The MGB constructs were taken from previous studies applying MGB to consumer studies [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 16 , 20 ]. The survey instrument included the following sub-groups of variables, mainly from the MGB constructs: attitudes towards PSCs, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control (PBC), positive anticipated emotions (PAE), negative anticipated emotions (NAE), desire, prior knowledge through health communication, and intention to continue participating in PSCs, as well as demographic variables such as age, gender, and PSC-related questions (e.g., participation frequency).…”

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The Effect of Social Norm-based Intervention with Observable Behaviour on Physical Activity among Adolescents: A Randomized Controlled Trial

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The Effect of Social Norm-based Intervention on Physical Activity among Adolescents: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…[10][11][12] Recent studies have used descriptive norms where study participants were presented with physical activity information of others, and found significant association between receiving descriptive norms and self-reported physical activity, intention to be active or attitude toward physical activity. [13][14][15] However, none of these studies used an objective assessment of physical activity to measure the study outcome.…”