Motivation to Move

Understanding what you need to change in order to maintain a new behaviour is key to maintaining your new, positive habit, actions or goal. These changes can occur on an individual level, across a group or we could be speaking about behaviour change on a society level. There have been numerous attempts to explain this process within the research field; with multiple models and theories being proposed. I wanted to focus upon just one of these theories today, and use it to explain how we can identity what needs to change for a new behaviour to be established and maintained. 

The model selected is... the Capability, Opportunity and Motivation Model of Behaviour Change (otherwise known as the COM-B model). Here is an outline for the three COM-B factors: 

• Capability - this refers to an individuals psychological and physical ability to participate in an action, behaviour or task (including their mental state, knowledge and strength). 
• Opportunity - referring to the external factors which make a behaviour possible (i.e., environment - free classes; socially - support network). 
• Motivation - the conscious and unconscious cognitive processes which direct and inspire behaviour. These are internal processes that influence decision making, including, reflective motivation (i.e., making plans) and automatic motivation (i.e., impulses, inhibition). 

If each of the three factors are targeted when an intervention is successful implemented then an individuals behaviour will change. For those intending on creating a behaviour change intervention, I’d strongly recommend you always conduct your research into the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW). The purpose of the BCW is to aid the designing of an intervention by moving from a behavioural analysis of a problem, towards an evidence-based intervention method.  

Find the original research here: 

Michie, S., Atkins, L., & West, R. (2014). The Behaviour Change Wheel: A Guide to Designing Interventions. Find the text here 

West, R., & Michie, S. (2020). A brief introduction to the COM-B Model of behaviour change and the PRIME theory of motivation [V2]. Qeios. Find the text here