ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Behav. Neurosci.
Sec. Individual and Social Behaviors
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1693386
Inverted-U Association Between Daily Steps and WHO-5 in University Students: Non-linear Modeling and Robustness Checks
Provisionally accepted
- Zhengzhou University of Industrial Technology, Zhengzhou, China
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Physical activity is closely linked to mental health, but the dose–response shape remains debated. This cross-sectional study examined whether daily steps are nonlinearly associated with subjective well-being (SWB) among Chinese university students. A total of 820 participants (mean age 21.5 years; 51.8% women) wore wrist-worn accelerometers for 7 days, and SWB was assessed with the WHO-5 index. Restricted cubic spline models adjusting for age, sex, sleep quality, perceived stress, and socioeconomic status revealed a significant nonlinear association (p < 0.05). SWB increased steeply up to ~8,650 steps/day and then leveled off, with a statistical plateau at ~19,300 steps/day (bootstrap-BCa 95% CI: 7,997–17,896; delta-method 95% CI: 9,394–14,462). However, no contrast versus 4,000 steps/day exceeded the prespecified minimal clinically important difference (MCID = 10 points). Findings were consistent across quadratic and segmented models, trimming and winsorization, and E-value analysis suggested that strong unmeasured confounding would be needed to nullify results. In conclusion, daily steps improved SWB until ~8,000–12,000/day, after which benefits plateaued, highlighting diminishing returns rather than harm and supporting range-based step guidance for student mental health.
Keywords: Subjective well-being, Daily step count, Dose–response, nonlinear association, university students, sleep quality, perceived stress
Received: 30 Aug 2025; Accepted: 03 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Wang, Huang, Xiu and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yan Wang, haizhixinyanyan@126.com
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