Self-determination

Finally, much evidence was suggested regarding different types of motivation for being a fitness club member in general. Of particular interest were the various different levels of motivation that members seemed to have.

Current members, with a low intention to cancel seemed to have more deeply-felt motivations for being a fitness club member:

Interviewee 1: It's important that I can go there and spend an hour there and then come home, it’s an understanding on their part that it going to the gym can be integrated into your life. Interviewee 2: I would say [the gym] plays a very important role in my life, not just on the outside but the inside as well.

Interviewee 4: If I could go more I would, I'm a bit of a 'gym bunny'… I feel the benefits of going so I feel like I want to carry on.

Interviewee 8: Yes it's [going to the gym] like my mate.

However, one current member, with some intention of cancelling, expressed a more undecided level of motivation that was mainly externally focused on wanting to lose weight:

Interviewee 3: It's fluctuating but then I think I'll go 'cos I want to lose weight.

Another current member, with some intention of cancelling, expressed a view that she wasn’t ‘one of those people that really likes gyms’ and that being a gym member was not pleasurable or highly prioritised:

Interviewee 14: But now I've got the dog, it's the fresh air rather than being cooped up...I'm not one of those people that really likes gyms... I don't really feel like I get a lot of pleasure from it. It's not a great part of my life. They should give everyone a dog… I felt I needed to [join a fitness club] from peer pressure from my family... family really but I suppose that everyone feels they should be doing something…I tend to fit it in around other things in my life- it's never been a major priority.

As well as current members, ex members commented on their motivation to be fitness club members, all of whom seemed to feel more distant from ‘the gym’, almost resenting it:

Interviewee 17: The ‘gym thing’ doesn’t suit me.

Interviewee 19: If I was in there with loads of sixteen or seventeen year olds, gangs of them, they'd probably spend more time messing about. You've got to get into that zone haven't you. Going to the gym was such a chore. I'm an impatient person and I need to see results...because those goals didn't come quick enough, I got disheartened… that's what put me off too, that everything was revolving around the gym.

One member expressed a change in their motivation from when they started to when their membership ended:

Interviewee 22: To start with I used to talk about it at work and with my husband. With my friends at work I stopped talking about it really. With my husband, because I was still paying and I wasn't going, he started to nag me...it used to be 'why haven't you been to the gym?'. When I was going I was enjoying it, but when I wasn't going I was thinking about the fact that I was paying for it but not going so it [motivation] was always there but for different reasons. To start with I would have classed it as a personal interest, but not so much towards the end.

This suggests that there are distinct levels of motivation for being a member of a fitness club. Guilt was also suggested as a source of motivation.After reviewing the literature surrounding motivation and exercise, self-determination theory in relation to exercise seemed an appropriate construct which could capture such a wide variety of motivations.

Self-determination Theory (SDT) is a theoretical framework for investigating motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan & Deci, 2000) which has been used extensively to research motivation for physical activity. Underpinning SDT is the concept of various types of motivation, each representing different levels of self-determination along a continuum ranging from non-self-determined (controlled) to completely self-determined (autonomous) which regulate behaviour.

Other than ‘amotivation’ (no motivation) there are five types of regulation; external, introjected, identified, integrated and intrinsic, as shown overleaf in Fig. 5.2.

Fig. 5.2 Self-Determination Continuum

External regulation relates to being controlled by motivation to satisfy some kind of external pressure (e.g. going to a fitness club due to the recommendation of someone else to lose weight). Introjected regulation relates to being controlled by motivation to increase internal affective states, such as self-esteem or guilt (e.g. going to a fitness club to avoid feelings of self-loathing). Identified regulation relates to an autonomous motivation to achieve some kind of personal value (e.g. going to a fitness club due to a personal desire to lose weight). Integrated regulation relates to an autonomous motivation to achieve a personal value which is congruent to a person’s sense of self (e.g. going to a fitness club due to a personal desire to lose weight which strengthens an identity of, say, ‘being a waif’). Intrinsic regulation relates to an intrinsic, autonomous motivation to perform a behaviour for the sheer enjoyment and satisfaction of doing so (e.g. going to the fitness club because it’s enjoyable). When a customer is higher on the controlled-autonomous continuum (being more autonomous) with a high level of self-determination, they can be considered as more affectively involved; rather than perceiving fitness club membership as purely functional they perceive it as something which yields internal pleasure and satisfaction.

According to Mintel (2009), the perception held by many members is that fitness clubs are boring and repetitive, suggesting that operators should seek to emphasise the pleasure and enjoyment of membership. SDT has been found to have considerable efficacy in understanding motivation for physical activity. For instance, Ryan, Frederick, Lepes, Rubio & Sheldon (1997) found that intrinsic motivation increases exercise participation. Further, a meta-analysis by Chatzisarantis, Hagger, Biddle, Smith and Wang (2003) found that introjected regulation, identified regulation and intrinsic regulation are positively associated with physical activity intentions and that external regulation was negatively associated with physical activity intentions.

More recently, identified and intrinsic regulation have been associated with an increase in exercise participation (Ingledew & Markland, 2009) and that external regulation is linked with lower exercise participation as opposed to identified regulation which was linked to higher exercise participation (Ingledew & Markland, 2008).

However, whilst these studies have found relationships between self-determination and exercise participation, none of these studies have looked at the direct effect self- determination may have on membership cancellation.

Whilst ‘amotivation’ may also be a trigger for cancellation, amotivation is distinct from the other types of regulation in that amotivation is related to having no motivation (level) whereas the others are types (sources of motivation). It was decided that ‘type’ of motivation was more fitting to the evidence collected in the interviews. Amotivation, in the context of this thesis, would refer to members considering going to the club to be pointless and that they resented going. However, no such evidence from the interviews was collected, and so amotivation was not taken forward as a potential predictor of retention.