Why don’t people do what’s good for them? : an examination of the value(s) which affect physical activity.

One of the 21st Century’s major public health issues is physical inactivity. Therefore one of the greatest public policy challenges is to find new ways of conferring to an inactive population the health related benefits that arise from being physically active in a way that not only leads to knowledge acquisition, but which also leads to increased levels of participation in physical activity. Participation rates in physical activity across the UK have remained stubbornly static since the mid‐ 1980s and retain a range of gender, age, social‐economic and ethnic participation inequalities.

Research has indicated that, when compared to men, women are more likely to: lead sedentary lifestyles (Hausenblas and Symons‐Downs, 2005), experience poor health (Bertakis et al., 2000), and feel more uncomfortable about their body image (Liechty et al., 2006), factors which impact on and/or result in lower participation levels, suggesting that social marketing campaigns to date have been largely ineffective. A central tenet of social marketing is to achieve a voluntary, not forced or coerced behaviour change by emphasising a value proposition that induces action from the consumer. Set in the context of publicly funded leisure facilities this paper offers empirical insights regarding the drivers, constraints and consumption values underpinning women’s participation in physical activity. Our results suggest that value perceptions regarding the costs, benefits and enjoyment of exercise do not differ with gender. However, statistically significant differences exist between the genders regarding: the physical environment within which exercise occurs; the quality of service experience; and intrinsic factors such as social and altruistic value.

Insights gained from this research may be able to inform policymakers and leisure services providers regarding more effective methods of engaging ‘hard‐to‐reach’ groups, such as women. Specifically, our findings suggest that exercise adoption is likely to be increased with targeted social marketing campaigns which focus on emphasising the experiential aspects of consuming physical activity viewed from the perspective of value‐in‐use rather than from the traditional price‐based perspective that tends to focus on the trade off of costs against benefits.