Research on a Remote and Digital Walking Program During the COVID-19

Self-regulation of exercise has been highly encouraged to stay healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there appears to be a lack of validated health tool to assess adults’ health and wellbeing. This study aimed to use a remote web-based app to explore participants’ daily home-based walking during the COVID-19. A 30-day home-based walking program with three different groups was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., 3kms walking group, 5kms walking group, and 8kms walking group). 140,129 healthy adults were recruited, with 61,077 of them recording their walking, reflecting a participant retention of 43.6%. More than half of participants (54.4%) engaged in walking for 21 days. Significant differences were found in the average self-reported accumulated walking days and participants’ attendance rate of each accumulated walking day between the three groups (p< 0.01). An obvious decrease was recorded in participants’ attendance after the accumulated 21 walking days, with the highest decrease rate of 21.6% in the 3kms walking group. This study suggests that a remoted web-based app combined with incentives might effectively encourage participants to engage in the home-based walking program.