Novelty, emotions and intention to be physically active in Physical Education students.

In recent years, the importance of students' emotions in Physical Education classes has been highlighted. Novelty has also recently been proposed as a candidate for basic psychological need. To date, no study has specifically focused on analysing the relationships between these two constructs, which is the main objective of this paper. For this purpose, a structural equation model was tested with 799 Physical Education students with a mean age of 13.16 years (SD = 1.17). The results showed that students' perception of their teachers' novelty support strategies predicted the satisfaction of this need (β = .81; p < .01). In turn, novelty satisfaction positively predicted positive emotions and negatively predicted negative emotions, with the explained variances of enjoyment (52%), pride (41%), and boredom (37%) standing out. Finally, the emotions enjoyment (β = .45; p < .01) and hopelessness (β = -.16; p < .01) predicted intention to be physically active in the future. These results show the importance of novelty in making PE a positive emotional experience and its effect on the creation of healthy habits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]