A preliminary exploratory cross-sectional study examined socio-ecological correlates of exercise procrastination and exercise addiction in 570 Chinese university students (mean age 19.15 ± 1.09 years) from a single university. The study used self-reported data and did not report specific effect sizes, absolute numbers, or p-values for the associations identified.
For exercise addiction, regular exercise was positively associated, while female sex (compared to male) was negatively associated. For exercise procrastination, later habitual bedtime and more frequent short-video use before sleep were positively associated, whereas regular exercise and having a greater number of friends were negatively associated. Regular exercise was the only factor associated with both outcomes, showing opposite directions—linked to lower procrastination but higher addiction-like risk.
No safety or tolerability data were reported. Key limitations include the cross-sectional design, self-reported data, single-site sample, use of a coarse personality measure, and inability to establish causality or generalize beyond this specific student population. Funding and conflicts of interest were not reported.
For practice, the authors suggest campus health promotion may benefit from stratified strategies that address both exercise delay and monitor potentially excessive, addiction-like exercise tendencies. However, these are preliminary exploratory findings from an observational study that cannot establish causation, and longitudinal replication with improved measurement is warranted before clinical application.
Researchers conducted a preliminary study to understand what factors are linked to two different exercise patterns in university students: putting off exercise (procrastination) and developing potentially unhealthy, addiction-like exercise habits. They surveyed 570 students at a single Chinese university, asking about their exercise habits, sleep, social life, and media use. The study found that students who exercised regularly were less likely to procrastinate but showed a higher risk of addiction-like exercise patterns. Other factors mattered too: students who went to bed later and watched more short videos before sleep tended to procrastinate more on exercise, while those with more friends tended to procrastinate less. Female students showed a lower risk of exercise addiction compared to males. No safety issues were reported, as this was a survey study. The main reason to be careful is that this was a one-time survey at one university. It shows links between factors, but it cannot prove that one thing causes another. The findings are also specific to this group of students and may not apply to others. Readers should see this as an early look at how different lifestyle and social factors might relate to exercise habits. More research is needed to confirm these patterns and understand why they occur.
What this means for you: Early study finds links between lifestyle factors and exercise habits in students, but more research is needed to understand causes.
View Original Abstract ↓
Exercise procrastination and exercise addiction reflect two maladaptive patterns at opposite ends of the physical-activity spectrum, yet their socio-ecological correlates among university students remain unclear. We surveyed 570 Chinese university students (mean age = 19.15 ± 1.09 years) and assessed exercise procrastination using the Procrastination in Exercise Scale (PES) and exercise addiction using the Revised Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI-R). Candidate predictors were drawn from individual characteristics, health behaviors, and interpersonal network factors. To accommodate a relatively large predictor set, we applied LASSO regression with 10-fold cross-validation (λ_min) and evaluated robustness using 1,000 bootstrap resamples and 1,000 repetitions of random 10-fold cross-validation, emphasizing predictors retained in the primary models and consistently selected across both sensitivity analyses. For exercise addiction, the most robust predictors were regular exercise (positively associated) and female (vs. male) sex (negatively associated). For exercise procrastination, later habitual bedtime and more frequent short-video use before sleep were positively associated, whereas regular exercise and a greater number of friends were negatively associated. Regular exercise was the only shared correlate, but it showed opposite directions across outcomes—lower procrastination yet higher addiction-like risk. These findings indicate that campus health promotion may benefit from stratified strategies that both reduce exercise delay and monitor potentially excessive, addiction-like exercise tendencies. Limitations include the cross-sectional, self-reported, single-site design and a coarse personality measure, which restrict causal inference and generalizability; longitudinal replication with improved measurement is warranted.
