Do other goals influence physical activity? A systematic review examining the relationship between other goals and physical activity behavior

Promoting regular physical activity (PA) is essential to population health, yet intervention success has been modest. Most approaches have focused heavily on PA motivation but give limited attention to other facilitating and conflicting goals in daily life. The purpose of this review was to unite the literature examining other life goals and appraise their relationship with PA. Ten electronic databases were searched from February to December 2015 through EBSCO with the keywords: goal, facilitation, conflict, interference, intergoal, time displacement, behavioral resolve, cross-behavior, PA and exercise. Combined with manual bibliography and citation searches, 292 potentially relevant abstracts were screened, 40 of which full-text articles were retrieved. A total of 20 articles with 22 independent data-sets met the inclusion criteria and were included in the present review. Despite relatively heterogeneous measurement and a large proportion of cross sectional designs with student samples, the results indicated that PA is related to other life goals both in terms of facilitation (positive association) and conflict (negative association). Both facilitation and conflict goals had more consistent significant associations with PA when they were measured in terms of behavioral (e.g., study behavior, TV viewing) rather than higher-level objectives (e.g., getting healthy, being social). These goals explained additional variance in PA beyond PA intentions, plans, and perceived behavioral control and helped translate positive intentions into behavior. The results suggest that PA interventions should consider PA motivation with the integration of other facilitating and conflicting goals in one's daily life; however, better measurement of goals, with more diverse samples in experimental designs are needed.