Influencing factors on University students’ participation intention in sport during the Covid-19 pandemic based on the extended MGB model
Download this article Chong Jiang *, Haochen Zou ** and Dexin Zou ***
(*) Department of Sport Education and Humanity, Nanjing Sport Institute, Nanjing, China
(**) Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
(***) Institute of Sports Development and Planning, Nanjing Sport Institute, Nanjing 210014, China
Citation
Jiang, C., Zou, H., Zou, D. (2024). Influencing factors on University students’ participation intention in sport during the Covid-19 pandemic based on the extended MGB model. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 55(5), 544-563. doi:10.7352/IJSP.2024.55.544
Abstract
This study examined the effect of public health emergencies on the university students’ behavior intention of sports participation by applying the extended model of goal-directed behavior. Two new variables, cognition of public health emergency and frequency of past behavior, were added to improve the model’s predictive ability. Employing 1558 university students in China as research samples, the results have revealed that attitude, perceived behavior control, positive anticipated emotion and negative anticipated emotion had a positive effect on the desire for sports participation, which in turn influenced their behavioral intention for sports participation. At the same time, cognition of public health emergencies and frequency of past behavior had positive effects on the desire and behavioral intention for sports participation. In addition, the results also proved that the complex correlation coefficient of the desire to participate in physical exercise is 0.44. The value indicates that the seven variables of university students’ attitude, subjective norm, anticipated emotion, perceived behavior control, cognition of public health emergency and frequency of past behavior explain the 44% variation of exercise desire. The complex correlation coefficient of participation intention in physical exercise is 0.61, which manifests those three variables of university students’ cognition of public health events, the frequency of past behavior and the desire to participate in sports explain the 61% variation of exercise intention. The findings shed light on a better understanding of the decision-making processes of university students under public health emergencies.
Keywords: Extended model of goal-directed behavior (EMGB); Behavioral in- tention/Public health emergency, Structural equation model, sports participation