Introduction
Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the leading cause of death and disability among adults worldwide and has become the third leading cause of death among Chinese adults (Health Statistics Information Centre of the Ministry of Health PRC 2012). Previous studies have shown that patients with CHD have poor quality of life (QoL) (Bengtsson et al. 2004, Brink et al. 2005, Kristofferzon et al. 2005). Compared with an age- and sex-matched healthy population, CHD patients scored lower in most domains of SF-36 within a period of 2•5 years following myocardial infarction (Worcester et al. 2007, Zhang et al. 2011). Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation has been shown to benefit CHD patients’ QoL (Heran et al. 2011). However, participation in, and adherence to, exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation programmes is poor (Suaya et al. 2007, van Engen-Verheul et al. 2013). Thus, improving the uptake of, and adherence to, exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation programmes – which in turn improve CHD patients’ QoL – is a global concern.