ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1695542
This article is part of the Research TopicLife Skills in School Health Promotion: Challenges and SolutionsView all 4 articles
Influencing Factors of Physical Exercise Behavior Among Chinese Female University Students: A Configurational Analysis Based on fsQCA
Provisionally accepted
- Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China
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Objective This study investigates how combinations of factors lead to high physical activity levels among Chinese female university students. Methods Grounded in Social Cognitive Theory(SCT), we developed an "Individual-Behavior-Environment" triadic reciprocity framework. Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we performed a configurational analysis of physical activity behaviors among 115 Chinese female university students. The study assessed six antecedent conditions across three dimensions: capability cognition (exercise self-efficacy, perceived value of exercise), motivational drive (exercise motivation, subjective exercise experience), and environmental interaction (friend support, social anxiety). Results None of the six individual conditions were necessary for high physical activity behavior. Instead, high activity levels emerged from synergistic interactions among multiple conditions. We identified eight distinct equifinal configurations leading to high physical activity, with an overall solution consistency of 0.888 and coverage of 0.722, indicating strong model robustness. These configurations formed four typical driving modes: Immersive Enjoyment, Autonomous Drive, Dual Core Reinforcement, and Efficacy Anxiety Compensation. Conclusion This study confirms the characteristics of "multiple conjunctural causation" and "causal asymmetry" in forming physical activity behaviors among Chinese female university students. It extends SCT by revealing complex compensatory and substitutive mechanisms among factors, moving beyond traditional linear models. The findings offer a novel configurational perspective for understanding this population's physical activity behaviors and provide crucial evidence for designing targeted health behavior interventions.
Keywords: Chinese female university students, Physical activity behavior, Influencing factors, fsQCA, configurational analysis
Received: 30 Aug 2025; Accepted: 09 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 JIA, Meng, Zhang, SUN and He. 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: Xinqi He, 13507096169@163.com
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