Testing the relationships between motivation and future intention in physical activity: does governmental financial support matter?

ABSTRACT

As a new sports policy, named “School Sport Promotion Group (SSPG)”, the Korea government selected 50 schools in 2011 and 2012. Each school was granted US$40,000 a year for a three-year term. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the SSPG programme when it pertained to students’ motivation and participation in school sport clubs. More specifically, the moderation effect of governmental financial support in the relationships between motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) and sport participation was tested using structural equation modelling. The results indicated that both intrinsic motivation (β = .22) and extrinsic motivation (β = .20) were significant indicators of future participation intention in a non-SSPG model while only intrinsic motivation (β = .58) was a significant indicator in the SSPG model. A chi-square differential test showed that the coefficient of the path from intrinsic motivation to future intention in the SSPG was significantly larger than that in the non-SSPG model, supporting the moderating role of governmental financial support. The results of this study can provide administrators with meaningful information regarding how financial support can promote students’ physical activity and health.

KEYWORDS:

• Intrinsic motivation
• extrinsic motivation
• participation intention
• physical activity
• governmental financial intervention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017S1A5B8067020).

Notes on contributors

Hyungil H. Kwon

Hyungil Harry Kwon is a Professor in the Department of Physical Education at Chung-Ang University. His research areas are in sport marketing and sport consumer behaviour. He worked for the preparation committee of 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games and has been actively involved in the works of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of the Republic of Korea.

Do Young Pyun

Do Young Pyun is with School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University in the UK. His research lies in the field of sport marketing and management and advances the understanding of consumers’ cognitive and affective structures in various sport contexts.

Ji Young Kim

Ji Young Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sports and Dance at Sangmyung University. She has served as Director and Project Leader of Global Research Institute for Arts and Culture Education, supported by Ministry of Education, Korea. Much of her work has been on improving universal design for learning and pedagogical content knowledge in dance and physical activity.