Abstract
Exercise adherence remains a problem. Drawing from Lewin's iconic formula about understanding human behavior, examination of both personal and environmental factors appear warranted as we try to identify factors to help us to 'keep on truckin'. On the personal side, autonomous regulation of physical activity has been positively associated with the frequency of being active (Teixeira et al., 2012). In terms of environment, it has been reported that perceived competence or success determines subsequent motivation, and that success is more motivating than failure (Losier & Vallerand, 1994). However, there is limited research examining the interaction of individual motivation and performance outcome on one's intention to return to the popular activity of running. The purpose of this study was to examine how an individual's motivation and satisfaction with a race-day outcome were related to the intention to return to running. Individuals (n=60, Mage= 43.8) participating in a community fun run completed the BREQ (Wilson et al., 2006) to assess autonomous motivation one week before the race, then completed post-race, the individual performance subscale adapted from the ASQ (Reimer & Chelladurai, 1998) to assess race outcome satisfaction and an intention to return to running measure. Results from the hierarchical regression revealed that runners with higher autonomous motivation reported a greater intention to return to running regardless of satisfaction with race-day outcome. These initial findings indicate that personal factors such as autonomous regulation may have more impact on future intention to run than environmental factors such as satisfaction with a race-day outcome.
