Few Chinese people participating in physical exercise is an important issue. Statistics of the Ministry of Health in Healthy China 2020 Strategic Planning indicate that 83.8% Chinese residents over the age of 18 never participate in physical exercise in 2010, which consists of 73.2% of city residents. Scarce of interest in sports is a primary factor to influence people to participate in physical exercise. Therefore it is important to stimulate the exercise motivation. Self-determination theory (SDT) insists that there are various levels of sports motivation including controlled motivation (external regulation & introjected regulation) and autonomous motivation (identified regulation & integrated regulation). The sports motivation keeps higher level only when controlled motivation converts into autonomous motivation which underlies enduring sports behavior. Whether the external environment satisfies personal psychological needs (autonomy need, ability need, and relationship need) is another factor related to sports motivation. Few indigenous research has been conducted to promote physical exercise of urban residents based on SDT. In this study，we hypothesized the relationship between autonomy support of coach and physical exercise intentions of urban residents was mediated by basic need satisfaction and autonomous motivation． Data was collected from 350 urban residents of 18 to 56 years old. Eighteen percentage of the urban residents did not finish high school, 24.9 % of them finished high school, 21.1% of them had college degree, and 36% had bachelor degree or above. The 6-item Sport Climate Questionnaire, Basic Need Satisfaction Scale with 9-item, Exercise Self-Regulation Questionnaire with 17-item by Deci and Ryan（2011）and self-edited physical exercise scale with one item were used. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the structure of Sport Climate Questionnaire and Basic Need Satisfaction Scale. In this study, their internal reliabilty estimate α were .93 and .85 respectively. Exercise Self-Regulation Questionnaire was revised according to the modified index and standard load. Comfirmatory factor analysis supported a four-dimension structure with 13 items. We edited physical exercise scale according to an operational definition of sports population to ensure its reliability and validity. Structural equation fitting results supported the hypothesized nested intermediary model. The results suggested autonomy support, basic psychological need, autonomous motivation and exercise intentions were closely related with each other, which matched SDT well. And external regulation was negatively associated with Autonomy support, basic psychological need, autonomous motivation and exercise intentions. Introjected regulation was not significantly correlated with autonomy support, basic psychological need and exercise intentions, which might be affected by the Chinese traditional "frail" aesthetic concept. Namely autonomy support of coach could not only directly predict exercise intentions, but also indirectly predict exercise intentions through 3 mediating variables: basic psychological need, autonomous motivation, and the interaction between them. The intermediary effect of basic psychological need, autonomous motivation and the interaction accounts for 44%, 17% and 37% respectively. To sum up, this study aims at promoting urban residents’ exercise intentions. The results partially confirmed this hypothesis. To build motivation model of urban residents’ exercise intentions based on SDT is an effective method to promote urban residents to participate in physical exercise and Nationwide Fitness Campaign.