A stressor-strain-outcome cross-lagged panel study of exercise addiction: evidence from a two-wave survey

This study examines whether exposure to exercise-related information on social media, conceptualised as a potential stressor, is associated with subsequent exercise addiction (EA) symptoms through social physique anxiety (SPA) and obsessive passion (OP), and whether reciprocal feedback processes further reinforce risk within the stressor–strain–outcome (SSO) framework. Using a two-wave panel survey of physically active social media users in mainland China (N = 1005; 4-week interval) and cross-lagged panel modelling, we tested both forward and reverse SSO pathways. Results showed that baseline exposure did not predict subsequent changes in SPA, OP, or EA symptoms after controlling for autoregressive effects. In contrast, SPA and OP prospectively predicted higher EA, with OP showing the strongest effect, while EA symptoms predicted increases in both strains. Moreover, SPA and OP also predicted greater subsequent exposure, revealing a strain-centered feedback cycle linking exposure and EA symptoms. Multi-group analyses indicated that the cross-lagged structure was invariant across gender. These findings refine SSO theorising in digital fitness contexts by highlighting psychological strains and feedback dynamics as central mechanisms, while suggesting that general information exposure functions more as a stable background than an immediate trigger for EA symptoms.