The Longitudinal Relationship between Subjective Exercise Experience and Physical Exercise among University Students: The Moderating Role of Motivational Beliefs

A one-year study of university students in Jiangxi Province, China, has found that how students feel when they exercise and how much they exercise reinforce each other over time. Researchers surveyed 422 students at two points one year apart and used a cross-lagged statistical model to test whether subjective exercise experience predicted later physical activity, whether activity predicted later feelings, or both. The answer was both, and the strength of each pathway depended partly on the students’ motivational beliefs.

The participants were first-year-aged university students with a mean age of 18.29 years, and 52.6 percent were male. Each student completed the Subjective Exercise Experience Scale, the Adolescent Physical Activity Scale, the Exercise Self-Efficacy Scale, and the Perceived Value of Exercise Scale at both measurement phases.

The cross-lagged design is what gives the findings their directional bite. Because both variables were measured twice with a year between assessments, the researchers could test whether an earlier score predicted a later score after accounting for each variable’s own stability over time and for gender. Subjective exercise experience at the first assessment significantly and positively predicted physical exercise behavior at the second, with a standardized coefficient of 0.385. Physical exercise behavior at the first assessment also significantly and positively predicted subjective exercise experience at the second, with a coefficient of 0.336. Both pathways were statistically significant at p < 0.001.

This bidirectional pattern suggests a reciprocal loop rather than a one-way street. Students who reported more pleasant subjective experiences with exercise tended to be more physically active a year later, and students who exercised more tended to report better exercise-related feelings a year later. The authors also reported a significant positive correlation between the two variables overall, consistent with the cross-lagged results.

The moderating analysis added a second layer. Motivational beliefs, captured through measures of exercise self-efficacy and the perceived value of exercise, significantly and positively moderated both cross-lagged pathways. In practical terms, the strength of the link between feeling good about exercise and later activity, and between activity and later good feelings, varied with how confident and how convinced students were about the value of exercise. Students with stronger motivational beliefs showed stronger prospective associations on both routes.

Gender differences appeared at both phases. Male participants scored higher on average than female participants on both subjective exercise experience and physical exercise behavior across the two measurement points. The cross-lagged model controlled for gender, so the longitudinal pathways held after accounting for these baseline differences, but the differences themselves underscore that exercise feelings and behavior are not evenly distributed in this population.

Important limitations frame these conclusions. The study is observational, so the cross-lagged coefficients describe prospective associations, not causal effects established by experiment. The sample came from a single province in China and consisted of young university students, which limits how far the results generalize to other ages, regions, or cultures. All measures were self-reported questionnaires, which are vulnerable to recall and social desirability bias. The one-year interval between assessments is also a coarse window; shorter-term dynamics within that year were not captured.

Within those limits, the study offers a technically grounded longitudinal picture: for these 422 students, exercise feelings and exercise behavior formed a mutually reinforcing, gender-adjusted loop over a year, and motivational beliefs strengthened both directions of that loop. The authors conclude that subjective exercise experience and physical exercise behavior are linked across time in university students, and that motivational beliefs significantly moderate the prospective predictive pathways between them.

Subject of Research: The bidirectional longitudinal relationship between subjective exercise experience and physical exercise behavior among university students, moderated by motivational beliefs.

Article Title: The longitudinal relationship between subjective exercise experience and physical exercise among university students: the moderating role of motivational beliefs

Article References: Meng, D., Guo, W., Zhang, T., He, X., Jia, P., Li, J., & Ding, L. (2026). The longitudinal relationship between subjective exercise experience and physical exercise among university students: the moderating role of motivational beliefs. Frontiers in Public Health, 14, Article 1972061. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1972061

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1972061

Keywords: physical exercise, university students, subjective exercise experience, cross-lagged model, motivational beliefs, exercise self-efficacy, longitudinal study, gender differences, public health, China, longitudinal, relationship