Coach leadership behavior and achievement goal orientation in relation to athlete engagement: the dual mediating role of basic psychological needs

李, 凯鑫; Zhibo, Cui; Wang, Tong; Li, ZhiHua; Yang, Chengbo

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1527409

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Sport Psychology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1527409

This article is part of the Research Topic Determinants of Achievement in Top Sport View all 16 articles

Coach leadership behavior and achievement goal orientation in relation to athlete engagement: the dual mediating role of basic psychological needs

Provisionally accepted

Chengbo Yang ^*

Chengdu Sport University, Chengdu, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

ObjectiveThis study explored how coach leadership behavior, achievement goal orientation, and basic psychological needs affect athlete engagement.MethodsBased on self-determination theory, this study examined the influence of coach leadership behavior and achievement goal orientation on athlete engagement, as well as the mediating effect of basic psychological needs. The study utilized established scales, including the Leadership Behavior Scale for Coaches-15 (LSS-15), the Achievement Goal Questionnaire for Sport (AGQ-S), the Athlete Engagement Questionnaire (AEQ) and the Basic Psychological Needs Questionnaire (BPNQ).ResultsA total of 351 valid questionnaires were analyzed. The results found that (1) basic psychological needs, coach leadership behavior, and achievement goal orientation can predict athlete engagement, and a correlation exists between them; (2) basic psychological needs play a double mediating role in coach leadership behavior and athlete engagement, achievement goal orientation, and athlete engagement. Coach leadership behavior and basic psychological needs have a chain mediation mechanism between achievement goal orientation and athlete engagement. Achievement goal orientation and basic psychological needs have a chain mediation mechanism between coach leadership behavior and athlete engagement; (3) after model testing and model difference comparison. The effect of the chain model based on the coach leadership behavior is more significant, indicating that the plasticity of the coach leadership behavior is the strongest.ConclusionsThese findings analyze the relationship between coach leadership behavior, achievement goal orientation, basic psychological needs, and athlete engagement to optimize coach leadership behavior, guide the setting of reasonable achievement goal orientation, meet basic psychological needs, improve athlete engagement, and provide practical guidance for targeted intervention measures.

Keywords: coach leadership behavior, achievement goal orientation, Basic psychological needs, Athlete engagement Objective, Athlete

Received: 13 Nov 2024; Accepted: 17 Mar 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 李, Zhibo, Wang, Li and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Chengbo Yang, Chengdu Sport University, Chengdu, China

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.