An investigation into the willingness to use and loyalty towards sports-oriented mobile applications among sport sciences faculty students based on their regular physi̇cal activity engagement

With the rapid advancement of digitalisation, mobile applications have become an important tool in supporting sports and physical activity behaviours. This study aims to comparatively examine the willingness to use and loyalty toward sports-oriented mobile applications among Faculty of Sport Sciences students who regularly engage in sports and those who do not. The research was conducted with 480 university students who volunteered. The Mobile Application Usage Willingness Scale (MAUWS) and the Mobile Application Usage Loyalty Scale (MAULS) were used as data-collection instruments, and the collected data were analysed using independent-samples t-tests and ANOVA. The findings indicated that female students demonstrated a higher willingness to use mobile applications than male students, whereas male students exhibited stronger loyalty to application use. Furthermore, students who did not participate in regular sports activities were found to possess higher levels of both willingness and loyalty toward such activities than those who regularly engaged in sports. In terms of sports type, students participating in individual sports showed significantly higher levels of willingness and loyalty than those participating in team sports. Regarding academic departments, Sports Management students had higher willingness-to-use scores, while students in both Coaching Education and Sports Management demonstrated higher levels of application loyalty. Overall, sports-oriented mobile applications may be considered effective tools for supporting physical activity, facilitating performance monitoring, and contributing to a better understanding of digital sports habits among students in the Faculty of Sport Sciences. The findings from this study are expected to contribute to the development of strategies to integrate technology into sports participation among university youth.