The Importance of Being Useful and Fun: Factors Influencing Intention to Use a Mobile System Motivating for Physical Activity

The increase in health problems associated with a lack of physical exercise is of great concern in western countries. Mobile phone based, tailored motivational systems might help more people to exercise. A Web based survey of technology acceptance of such a system (n=1004) show that behavioral intention (BI) to use the system is controlled by intrinsic motivation (IM) and perceived usefulness (PU). The effect of selfefficacy and subjective norm (SN) on BI is fully mediated by PU, the effect of perceived ease of use (PEU) is mostly mediated by IM. Perceived future health does not influence BI. The magnitude of the effect of IM on BI, the positive relation between selfefficacy for training and BI and the lack of relation between perceived future health and BI suggest that mobile phone based tailoring systems would profit from being offered to the public as fun to use, game-like systems and only secondly as serious health enhancing tools.