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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1538200
This article is part of the Research TopicWell-being and Cognitive Science in Higher Education: Measures and InterventionView all articles
The Dual Mediating Effect of Self-efficacy and Motivation between Conscientiousness and Academic Performance of University Students in China: the Moderated Mediation Effect of Gender
Provisionally accepted- 1Software Engineering Institute of Guangzhou, Guangzhou, China
- 2Hanseo University, Seosan City, Republic of Korea
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In recent decades, there has been extensive research on the impact of personality on academic achievement, among which conscientiousness was verified to be a stable contributor. This study aims to clarify the moderated mediation relationship between conscientiousness, gender, academic self-efficacy, academic motivation, and academic performance. In order to achieve this purpose, the current study proposed a hypothesized model and verified it through a random sampling survey. With informed consent of the respondents, the survey was conducted on 304 Chinese university students through the Wenjuanxing platform. For data research and analysis tools, SPSS and PROCESS macro were used, specifically, descriptive statistics analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and SPSS PROCESS macro model 83. The results indicated that conscientiousness, academic self-efficacy, academic motivation, and academic performance were positively correlated. Further, gender moderated the mediating relationship from conscientiousness to academic selfefficacy to academic motivation to academic performance. Such research results provided new ideas on how to improve the academic performance of college students, namely, focusing on and improving their academic self-efficacy and academic motivation. Meanwhile, it also provides more targeted help for the gender-differentiated characteristics of college students.
Keywords: academic motivation, academic performance, Academic self-efficacy, conscientiousness, gender, moderated mediation effect
Received: 02 Dec 2024; Accepted: 08 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 LI, Ma and Lee. 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: JIANAN LI, Software Engineering Institute of Guangzhou, Guangzhou, China
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