Background: Member retention is critical for the operational sustainability of fitness centers. Prior evidence suggests that service quality, experience quality, and the recreation safety climate influence behavioral intentions, but prospective evidence on their impact on actual retention remains limited. Methods: A prospective cohort study was conducted among new members (N = 80) at the Fitness Center of the Health and Sport Center, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta, over three months. Baseline perceptions were measured using questionnaires for service quality, experience quality, recreation safety climate, and behavioral intentions. Analyses included descriptive statistics, Spearman’s correlations, multiple linear regression, and binary logistic regression with α = .05. Results: Three-month retention was 63.7%. All predictors correlated significantly with behavioral intentions—service quality (ρ = .682), safety (ρ = .581), and experience (ρ = .454), all p .05). Model adequacy was good (Nagelkerke R² = .723; Hosmer–Lemeshow p = .862) with 88.8% classification accuracy. Conclusions: Baseline perceptions of functional service attributes relate strongly to behavioral intentions, but short-term actual retention is chiefly predicted by service quality and behavioral intentions. These findings highlight that perceived service quality and behavioural intentions are the key early predictors of membership status within the first three months, whereas experiential and safety perceptions appear to influence retention indirectly by shaping intentions.
Arjuna et al. (Sat,) studied this question.