The role of community in exercise: cross-cultural study of online exercise diary users

Abstract

This study investigates users of a newly launched website aimed at tracking exercise activities. The data was collected through an online questionnaire with 282 respondents. Three nationalities, Spanish, Germans and Americans, were compared, and the results show that their relation to community aspects of the service was significantly different. The Spanish showed most interest in collaboration and creation of new contacts, whereas Germans were the least interested in these activities. The finding may be explained by the differences of these national cultures along the individualism-collectivism dimension of Hofstede's cultural theory. Across the nationalities, the users were foremost motivated by using the website for promoting their individual goals in exercise.