Encouraging active lifestyle with social sharing: A study on mobile fitness app

The prevalence of sedentary lifestyle has been become an alarming problem in recent decades. According to the World Health Organization, at least 2.8 million adults die each year due to insufficient physical activities, which are essential to regulating body fat and maintaining fitness. A key strategy to combat sedentary lifestyle is to encourage fitness exercises. Traditional wellness and lifestyle management programs focus on inducing health awareness and providing fitness activity support. The growing pervasive use of smartphones allows individualized and cost-effective digital wellness programs to be administrated through mobile fitness apps. Drawing on the self-presentation literature, this paper elucidates the effects of mobile fitness app on health outcomes. Specifically, this study examines two modes of mobile fitness app usage, namely without social sharing and with social sharing. The results of our longitudinal field experiment reveal strong evidence that mobile fitness apps help improve health outcomes. Furthermore, compared the absence of social sharing, social sharing leads to lower body fatness and higher physical fitness, however the effects of social sharing diminish over time.