A Study on the Factors Affecting Intention to Work Out in the Gym Among Middle-aged and Older People

Abstract

Purpose Exercise training in older people has been associated with health benefits such as decreased cardiovascular mortality and sarcopenia. Over the past decade,  a lot of private and public gyms were open for the public. Some of them provided the discount of entrance fee or even free for the middle-aged and older people to work out.  The aim is to understand the factors affecting the intention to work out in gym among middle-aged and older people, Method The study used the Theory of Planned Behavior proposed by Ajzen and Fishbein to build up the research architecture. Besides that, the “willing to pay” new construct was added to the research framework to increase the explanatory power. And, the study adopted a questionnaire survey and convenient sampling method, 315 valid questionnaire was collected. The descriptive statistics and regression analysis were used to analyze these data. Results & Discussion. Analysis of the data indicates the respondents have a strong intention to work out in the gym. The higher the education background, the stronger the "attitude toward the behavior", "subjective norm", "perceived behavior control“, and "behavioral intention" are. The respondents are also willing to pay in workout at the gym. Pearson correlation analysis shows that there is a significant positive correlation between each construct. Multiple regression analysis indicated that "attitude toward the behavior", "subjective norms", "perceived behavior control" and "willing to pay" positively affect the behavioral intention. The "subjective norm" is the highest influencing construct. It showed the workout intention of the respondents was highly affected by the third party such as friends and family members.