Does Where You Exercise Matter? The Influence of VR Environmental Cues and Social Cues on Exercise Motivation and Behavior

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Virtual reality exergames can create novel, ever-changing environments to encourage consistent exercise. This strength, however, has been underexplored in literature, which primarily focuses on three debates: indoor vs. outdoor, natural vs. artificial, and exercise-cued vs. non-exercise-cued environments. Existing studies mainly examine actual exercise outcomes, overlooking psychological and motivational aspects. This study bridges the gap by comparing all three environment types and measuring both psychological and exercise outcomes. A total of 167 university students participated in a 2 (number of players: single or multiple) by 3 (exercise environments: natural, artificial non-exercise-cued, artificial exercise-cued) experiment. Moderated mediation models show that highly biodiverse (i.e., virtual natural) and exercise-cued environments increase players’ vitality, self-efficacy, and future play intention more than virtual artificial settings through obligation to workout, particularly in the single-player condition. The same pattern occurred for players’ self-efficacy through pleasure in single-player conditions. Single player conditions allow environmental cues to be salient for increasing exercise motivation. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.