When Physical Activity Becomes a Personal Choice: How Psychological Ownership in Physical Activity Motivates Sustained Participation among College Students.

College students' participation in physical activity is often unstable and interrupted. Existing research has mainly explained this through motivation, autonomy, or exercise identity, but has paid less attention to why individuals experience exercise as their own activity. This study introduces psychological ownership as a complementary perspective and examines whether it is associated with autonomous choice, personal investment, and self connection, and whether it is related to sustained exercise intention through agency and affective commitment. Study 1 (N = 350) showed that autonomous choice and personal investment were positively associated with psychological ownership, whereas self connection was not significant in the natural setting. Study 2 (N = 209) provided experimental support for the proposed antecedent pathways, showing that self connection also increased psychological ownership under isolated experimental manipulation. Study 3 (N = 228) showed that psychological ownership was prospectively associated with later exercise intention and record-verified exercise behavior, with a small but significant indirect association through affective commitment. Taken together, the findings provide a psychological ownership perspective on the early development of sustained exercise participation and suggest that decision involvement, personal investment, and longer term relational support may be relevant for promoting more stable exercise participation.