Predicting Athlete Intentions for Using Sports Complexes in the Post-Pandemic Era

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Mar 9;20(6):4864. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20064864.

Abstract

In recent years, the concept of health has gradually fit into people's lives through the government's promotion. The indoor sports complex is becoming more and more popular, offering people the opportunity to engage in physical and recreational activities regardless of weather conditions. Psychological and social abundance is the key to improving happiness, and the most important thing is to treat and care for yourself. Many fitness venues have emerged to provide athletes with a wide range of choices. However, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is caused by a virus mainly transmitted through direct contact or air droplets, has had a severe impact on indoor gym users. Therefore, based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Health-Promoting Lifestyle (HPL), this research investigated athletes' behavioral intentions regarding sports halls and perceived risks as interfering variables. For data collection, we collected data samples from sports complexes athletes in Taiwan. A total of 263 responses were analyzed via SPSS 20.0 (IBM Corporation, New York, NY, USA) and AMOS 20.0 (IBM Corporation, New York, NY, USA) seis tests. The study's results indicate that health-promoting lifestyle cognition has a positive and significant effect on behavioral intention; athletes' attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control significantly affects the behavioral intention of using the facilities in a sports complex. Athletes' risk perceptions have an interference effect between HPL, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and behavioral intentions of using the facilities in a sports complex. Sports venue managers can refer to the results of this project to develop marketing strategies and promoting.

Keywords: health-promoting lifestyle; post-pandemic era athletes; sports complex; theory of planned behavior.

MeSH terms

  • Athletes / psychology
  • COVID-19* / epidemiology
  • Humans
  • Intention*
  • Pandemics
  • Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.