A Developmental Model for Predicting Sport Participation among Female Korean College Students

Although participating in regular physical activity has many benefits, female Korean college students tend to have much lower participation rates than their male counterparts. An effective means of increasing physical activity among female college students is sport participation. The purpose of this study is to incorporate three types of psychological needs from self-determination theory as precursor background variables into the theory of planned behavior to predict sport participation among female Korean college students. Our dataset consisted of 494 female undergraduate students attending Kyung Hee University in South Korea. Using structural equation modeling, the direct and indirect effects of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and psychological needs satisfaction such as competency, relatedness, and autonomy were examined. Although attitude towards and perceived behavioral control over sport participation were significantly associated with intention in all three models, subjective norm was not significantly associated with intention in any model. Satisfaction of the psychological needs for competency, relatedness, and autonomy had positive indirect effects on sport participation. This study underscores the importance of addressing the satisfaction of these three basic psychological needs when designing future sport promotion interventions for female college students.