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Economic preferences explaining physical activity stages of change
(2019)
Enemmistö maailman väestöstä ei tavoita viikoittaisia terveysliikkumissuosituksia, vaikka riittävän määrän fyysistä aktiivisuutta tiedetään ennaltaehkäisevän lukuisia sairauksia ja parantavan yksilöiden henkisiä kyvykkyyksiä. Kansanväliset...
Majority of the world population fail to meet with weekly physical activity guidelines, even if adequate amount of physical activity has been proved to prevent various diseases and improve one’s mental ability. International physical activity guidelines are rather reasonable demands between a minimum of three hours and fifteen minutes to four hours and thirty minutes on a weekly basis, based on the type of activity. Alas, depending on the studies and target groups, the inactive population is as high as 66-80 percent, and this untoward fact applies to all age groups. Nonetheless, there are people who habitually excel at meeting the guidelines. The key question is how their attributes and behaviour differ from the inactive individuals'. Earlier literature and research have suggested that one underlying factor would be individuals' approaches to risk and time. Moreover, researching risk- and time-related cognitive biases might be one way of understanding habitual physical activity. Until today, there are few studies and varying results among this research area. This perspective was taken to a closer examination as the research scope: how individuals’ economic preferences explain their physical activity. The indicator for physical activity was the stages of change model, that gives a stepwise outlook on how routinized and established one’s physical activity currently is. The research method was a cross-sectional case study. The study took part in a Finnish case organization, whose employees work indoors at office facilities. Subjects were studied via an online survey. Firstly, individuals' risk and time preferences were studied from the financial point of view by creating hypothetical situations of receiving money. These situations were a gamble with risk-aversive, risk-neutral, and risk-seeking options, and receiving money either now or after six months with a varying interest. Secondly, subjects answered statements considering physical activity to find out whether there underlay risk- or time-related cognitive biases: status quo bias, habit, loss aversion, intertemporal choice, and licensing effect. The data-analysing methods were ordinal logistic regression and multiple linear regression. Both methods resulted statistically significant causalities with three variables: age, status quo bias, and habit. This result was verified and refined in a structural equation model. Financial risk and time preferences and other background variables did not have statistically significant causalities. Neither did the other three cognitive biases under closer examination. The research objective was to build a model that have a causal effect on case company employees' physical activity stages of change. Suggestions based on this study result is to focus especially on the younger employees by initializing and incentivizing sustainable physical activity habits starting from the worksite, which might spread from work to other areas of life too. Further research was encouraged to set in motion, especially in the form of test-retest and a randomized controlled test with real financial incentives....
Majority of the world population fail to meet with weekly physical activity guidelines, even if adequate amount of physical activity has been proved to prevent various diseases and improve one’s mental ability. International physical activity guidelines are rather reasonable demands between a minimum of three hours and fifteen minutes to four hours and thirty minutes on a weekly basis, based on the type of activity. Alas, depending on the studies and target groups, the inactive population is as high as 66-80 percent, and this untoward fact applies to all age groups. Nonetheless, there are people who habitually excel at meeting the guidelines. The key question is how their attributes and behaviour differ from the inactive individuals'. Earlier literature and research have suggested that one underlying factor would be individuals' approaches to risk and time. Moreover, researching risk- and time-related cognitive biases might be one way of understanding habitual physical activity. Until today, there are few studies and varying results among this research area. This perspective was taken to a closer examination as the research scope: how individuals’ economic preferences explain their physical activity. The indicator for physical activity was the stages of change model, that gives a stepwise outlook on how routinized and established one’s physical activity currently is. The research method was a cross-sectional case study. The study took part in a Finnish case organization, whose employees work indoors at office facilities. Subjects were studied via an online survey. Firstly, individuals' risk and time preferences were studied from the financial point of view by creating hypothetical situations of receiving money. These situations were a gamble with risk-aversive, risk-neutral, and risk-seeking options, and receiving money either now or after six months with a varying interest. Secondly, subjects answered statements considering physical activity to find out whether there underlay risk- or time-related cognitive biases: status quo bias, habit, loss aversion, intertemporal choice, and licensing effect. The data-analysing methods were ordinal logistic regression and multiple linear regression. Both methods resulted statistically significant causalities with three variables: age, status quo bias, and habit. This result was verified and refined in a structural equation model. Financial risk and time preferences and other background variables did not have statistically significant causalities. Neither did the other three cognitive biases under closer examination. The research objective was to build a model that have a causal effect on case company employees' physical activity stages of change. Suggestions based on this study result is to focus especially on the younger employees by initializing and incentivizing sustainable physical activity habits starting from the worksite, which might spread from work to other areas of life too. Further research was encouraged to set in motion, especially in the form of test-retest and a randomized controlled test with real financial incentives....
