This study examines how sports contact motivation in social network service contexts relates to SNS-based sports engagement (SSSE) among Chinese college students. Drawing on Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT), we developed a value-centered framework linking SNS sports contact motivation (SSCM), perceived sports value, interest, and SSSE, in which expectancy is implicitly embedded within SNS-enabled perceptions of accessibility and competence. Data from 554 students were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that SSCM is significantly associated with perceived sports value and interest. Similarly, perceived sports value was positively associated with interest. However, interest did not show a significant association with SSSE. Although SSCM and perceived sports value displayed significant total effects on SSSE, neither their direct effects nor their indirect effects via interest reached statistical significance. Taken together, these findings suggest that SSSE is linked to behavior primarily through cognitive and affective evaluation processes rather than through simple motivational impulses. This pattern extends motivation-behavior models to digitally mediated sport contexts.
Ren et al. (Fri,) studied this question.