Table 3.

Factors that affect adherence to mobile health (mHealth) physical activity interventions.

				Association with physical activity app adherence
User characteristics
		Age	Inconsistent results Older age, more adherence (2 studies) [39,64] Unrelated to adherence (1 study) [51]
		Sex	Male with higher adherence (2 studies) [59,64]
		Weight	Inconsistent results Overweight reduced adherence (1 study) [39] Baseline weight or BMI was unrelated to adherence (1 study) [49]
		Education	Inconsistent results Middle education category with higher adherence (1 study) [59] Higher education status increased adherence (1 study) [46]
		Baseline physical activity	Baseline steps unrelated to adherence (1 study) [49]
Technology-related factors
	mHealtha functions		Feedback on progress or motivation increased adherence (6 studies) [32,37,42,55,66,71] Networking platforms or app-specific communities increased adherence (3 studies) [36,58,66] Reminder feature increased adherence (3 studies) [57,59,66] Access to historical physical activity data increased adherence (3 studies) [32,37,47] Interpersonal contact function increased adherence (2 studies) [42,47] Tailored interventions increased adherence (2 studies) [42,47] Automation of data input increased adherence (1 study) [32] Information update increased adherence (1 study) [32] Multiple tasks decreased adherence (1 study) [55]
	User experience		Ease of use increased adherence (2 studies) [57,66] Feeling challenged increased adherence (1 study) [37] Fun-to-use intervention increased adherence (1 study) [66]
Contextual factors				Weekdays have higher adherence than weekends (1 study) [59]

^amHealth: mobile health.