US adults’ initiation of lifestyle changes because of podcasts they listen to

Abstract

Many US adults listen to podcasts. Podcasts are a flexible and low-cost digital resource for health promotion. To examine sociodemographic and podcast use characteristics associated with initiating lifestyle changes because of podcasts among US adults who listen to podcasts. We conducted a secondary analysis of 2022 data from the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel ( N = 2383). Participants completed a web-based survey. We used chi-squared tests and classification tree analysis to examine characteristics associated with initiating lifestyle changes. Analyses were weighted to represent US adult podcast listeners. Initiating lifestyle changes because of podcasts differed by age, race/ethnicity, and podcast use characteristics (p’s < 0.01). Listening to health/fitness podcasts, listening to self-help/relationships podcasts, and encouragement or inspiration as major reasons for listening to podcasts emerged as important predictors of initiating lifestyle changes in the classification tree analysis. Initiating lifestyle changes because of a podcast was reported by 72.4% (SE: 2.2%) of US adults who listen to podcasts about health or fitness, 65.9% (SE: 4.5%) of those who listen to podcasts about self-help or relationships and report that encouragement or inspiration is a major reason they listen to podcasts and 32.3% (SE: 3.5%) of those for whom encouragement or inspiration is not a reason or is a minor reason for listening to podcasts, and 16.9% (SE: 1.3%) of podcast listeners who do not listen to health or fitness podcasts nor self-help or relationship podcasts. Research is needed to test how health-related podcasts can be leveraged to support lifestyle change.