Mobile fitness apps for promoting physical activity on Twitter: the #RunKeeper case
Jeroen Stragier, Peter Mechant · Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) · 2013
Running, walking and cycling are physical activities with a low entry threshold.Their health benefits are well documented.Yet, many people don't meet the minimum requirements of physical activity due to a wide variety of reasons.In this context, the emergence of new media can be partly identified as a cause of sedentary lifestyles.However, new media (tools) such as RunKeeper, Endomondo, Strava and Mapmyrun might also offer opportunities to encourage physical activity.Mobile fitness apps designed for smartphones experience an increasing popularity.They afford tracking and monitoring of activities as running, cycling and walking.More importantly, these activities can also be shared online on social network sites as Twitter and Facebook.In this paper we focus on the motivation of people for sharing their workouts with online peers.Results indicate that community identification, receiving positive feedback on activities and sharing information on activities are important predictors of a positive attitude towards sharing workouts, which leads to frequent sharing of those workouts.