Examining context stability, habits, and movement behaviors among behavioral adopters and maintainers: it's an...

Determine the extent to which context stability during movement behaviours was associated with changes in habit strength, physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour (SB) and whether there were differences in these associations among PA and SB reduction adopters and maintainers.

Older adults (N = 202; 60-85 years, 71.4% female, 74.4% White) completed three data collection periods over one year. Each data collection period included PA and SB habit strength and stage of change assessments, device-based PA and SB, and a 4-day intensive ecological momentary protocol capturing contextual features of PA and SB. Context stability was calculated as a reverse entropy score (categorical variables) or an intraindividual SD(continuous variables) for each contextual feature during PA and SB.

Context stability was more consistently associated with changes in habit strength than behaviour. For PA, maintainers showed behaviour increases linked to stable temporal and affective contexts, while adopters showed habit gains tied to their most stable individual cue. For SB, context stability was unrelated to behaviour change, but adopters showed stronger SB habit formation with stable individual cues. Too few maintainers were available to assess SB comparisons.

Findings support the theoretical link between context stability and habit strength, though the idiosyncratic nature of these associations should be considered.