The effects of competition on exercise intensity and the user experience of exercise, during virtual reality bicycling for healthy adults across the lifespan.

Background: Engaging in regular moderate-to-vigorous exercise is an essential component of promoting longevity and reducing health risks associated with a sedentary lifestyle. However, various barriers can hinder participation in high-intensity exercise. Virtual reality (VR) may enhance exercise adherence by increasing engagement and motivation. Specifically, elements such as visual feedback and competition within VR environments may encourage users to exercise at higher intensities. Though the literature suggests that competitiveness may decrease with age, there is limited research comparing intensity and motivation during competitive exercise across the lifespan. This study aims to compare the effects of visual feedback and competition in a VR bicycling simulation on exercise intensity and user experience (motivation and enjoyment) in middle-aged and older adults and compare them to healthy younger adults.

Methods: Adults aged 45-75 participated in three VR cycling conditions: self-competition, competition against others, and visual feedback. Each condition lasted five minutes, during which exercise intensity and visual attention were continuously recorded. Perceived effort and intrinsic motivation were assessed to evaluate user experience. Results were compared with data from a separate study involving younger adults bicycling in the same simulation.

Results: VR was tolerable for middle-aged and older adults with no age-related differences in tolerability observed. For middle-aged and older adults, competitive conditions led to higher exercise intensity compared to visual feedback while there were no differences in intrinsic motivation, enjoyment or visual attention. Across all 3 conditions, participants focused their attention on the task for > 70% of the trials. Compared to young adults, middle-aged and older adults had a lower raw bicycling cadence in the 2 competitive conditions and higher perception of effort in the visual feedback condition. There were no other age-related differences between the two groups.

Conclusion: This custom VR bicycling simulation effectively guided visual attention, encouraged high-intensity exercise, and was rated favorably among middle-aged and older adults. Therefore, VR bicycling employing competition and visual feedback may be a useful exercise tool regardless of the user's age, particularly for individuals that have self-developmental competitive profiles.

Trial Registration: Current Controlled Trials NCT05253703. Registered at ClinicalTrials.Gov on February 10, 2022.