The Role of Positive Psychology (Flow and Happiness) in Sustaining Long-Term Motivation Among Amateur Athletes

Background: Long-term adherence to sport depends on psychological mechanisms that sustain engagement in the absence of external reward, yet the constructs most closely linked to this process—flow and subjective well-being—have been examined largely in isolation and predominantly among adolescent, student, or elite athletic populations. Flow, an experiential state of complete absorption in an activity, and subjective well-being, comprising life satisfaction and affective balance, have each been associated with markers of motivation and performance, but their combined contribution to motivational persistence among adult, non-elite athletes remains empirically uncharacterized. This study is designed to examine the prospective relationship between dispositional flow, subjective well-being, and long-term self-determined motivation among amateur athletes, a population distinguished from adolescent and elite samples by the voluntary, self-financed, and non-institutionally structured nature of its participation. A two-wave prospective correlational design is proposed, in which dispositional flow (Dispositional Flow Scale-۲), happiness (Subjective Happiness Scale), and life satisfaction (Satisfaction with Life Scale) are assessed at baseline, and self-determined motivation (Behavioral Regulation in Sport Questionnaire) is assessed at baseline and after a six-month interval, with hierarchical regression and bootstrapped mediation/moderation analyses used to test the independent and interactive contribution of flow and well-being to sustained motivation. The study is intended to extend self-determination theory beyond its predominant application to structured competitive sport and to clarify whether flow and subjective well-being function as durable psychological resources for maintaining amateur sport participation, with implications for coaching practice and physical-activity promotion contingent on the pattern of prospective association observed.

کلیدواژه ها:

flow ، subjective well-being ، self-determination theory ، amateur athletes ، sport motivation