Note: *p <0.05,**p <0.01, the same below.
The effects of physical activity on mood states: a mediating model test of boredom
First, the mediating effect of boredom between physical activity and mood disturbance was tested using Model 4 in PROCESS 3.3 (Model 4 is a simple mediating model). As shown in table 5, physical activity had a significant negative predictive effect on mood disturbance (β =-0.17, t =-3.91, p <0.01), and after the mediating variable was added, the negative effect remained significant (β =-0.10,t =-2.94, p <0.01). Physical activity had a significant negative predictive effect on boredom (β =-0.11,t =-2.55, p <0.05), and boredom had a significant positive predictive effect on mood disturbance (β =0.61, t =17.62,p <0.01). In addition, the 95% bootstrap confidence intervals for the direct effect of physical activity on mood disturbance and the mediating effect of boredom did not contain 0. As shown in table 6, physical activity can not only directly predict mood disturbance but can also predict emotional turmoil through boredom; its direct effect (-0.10) and mediating effect (-0.07) accounted for 59.51% and 40.49% of the total effect (-0.17), respectively.
Table 5. Mediating model test of boredom on physical activity and mood disturbance