Keeping up appearances: testing a moderated mediation path of self-presentation motives, self-efficacy beliefs, social sharing of fitness records and fitness app uses

This survey study employed a framework of self-presentation motives in physical exercise to advance the understanding of exercise monitoring apps users’ sharing behaviours on social networking sites (SNS). 551 participants were recruited using Qualtrics national research panel. A model of moderated mediation was proposed and analysed. The results suggested that both agentic and communal self-presentation motives significantly predicted fitness sharing on SNS and fitness app use. Perceived self-presentation outcome value for agentic purposes significantly enhances the agentic motive in predicting sharing on SNS. Fitness sharing on SNS mediated the significant effect of both agentic and communal presentational motives on fitness app use. A number of theoretical and design implications to extend the understanding of fitness social sharing to health technology applications were discussed.