Exploration and Study of the Factors Influencing Users’ Adoption of Games for Fitness Behavior

Abstract

Exergaming has brought new fitness experience for people with restricted behavior in the post-epidemic era, but the current research on exergaming and home fitness behavior of general healthy users is basically in a gap. In this context, this study obtained a total of 603 valid game evaluations through interviews on user experience and online open questionnaires, 330 of which were collected as valid questionnaires through collating and summarizing them, fitness game evaluation scales were developed through factor analysis, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the intrinsic linkage among factors influencing users’ use of fitness games. The results show that the influencing factors are: technical quality, functional quality, social interaction, playfulness, ease of use and usefulness, among which usefulness has the highest explained variance, and technical quality positively affects functional quality, ease of use, social interaction and playfulness meanwhile indirectly affecting usefulness, while social interaction also positively affects playfulness, functional quality and ease of use meanwhile indirectly affecting usefulness. This leads to the conclusion that technical quality is the basis for the success of each factor, social interaction facilitates all aspects of the games, and usefulness is the key to exergaming. This study is a groundbreaking exploration of the factors that influence users' use of fitness games, which provides some references for subsequent research, development and operation related to fitness games.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This paper is supported by the School of Design of Jiangnan University. At the same time, this study is supported by the “Research on active and healthy lifestyle design [21BG131]” of the “General Project of National Social Science Foundation of China in Art.”

Notes on contributors

Zheng Wang

Wang Zheng is a graduate student of the school of design of Jiangnan University and a member of the International Joint Laboratory of health design. His main research direction is industrial design, product strategy and consumer behavior.

Rong Deng

Deng Rong is a professor and doctoral director of the school of design of Jiangnan University, deputy director of the social science department of Jiangnan University. Head of the International Joint Laboratory of health design, mainly engaged in industrial design, interaction and experience design.

Qian-ling Jiang

Jiang Qian Ling is an assistant researcher in the school of design of Jiangnan University and a Postdoctoral Station in design of Jiangnan University. The main research direction is user perception and preference; Human computer interaction interface design; Design research methods.