BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1594695
The Relationship Between Adolescent Legal Cognition and Academic Burnout: The Moderating Role of Satisfaction with the Natural Environment
Provisionally accepted
- 1Taizhou University, Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, China
- 2Wenzhou University, Wenzhou, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Academic burnout is common among adolescents and is linked to adverse academic and behavioral outcomes. Although poor academic performance is a known risk factor for juvenile delinquency and legal cognition has been identified as a protective factor against delinquent behavior, the relationship between legal cognition and academic burnout has not been examined. Methods: In June 2024, 518 in-school students (secondary and university) in Zhejiang Province, China completed measures of legal cognition, academic burnout, and natural-environment satisfaction. Data were analyzed in SPSS: Pearson correlations, hierarchical regression controlling for gender, age, and parental education, and simple-slope tests with 5,000 bootstrap resamples to probe significant interactions. Results: Legal cognition correlated negatively with academic burnout (r=−.16, p < .001) and positively with natural-environment satisfaction (r=.34, p < .001); burnout correlated negatively with natural-environment satisfaction (r=−.12, p=.010). In regression models, legal cognition negatively predicted burnout (β =−.19, p < .001). Importantly, the interaction between legal cognition and natural-environment satisfaction was significant (β = −.08, p= .038), and simple-slope tests showed that the inverse association between legal cognition and burnout was stronger at higher levels of natural-environment satisfaction. Conclusions: Legal cognition is inversely associated with adolescent academic burnout, and this protective effect is amplified when students report greater satisfaction with their natural environment. Findings support integrated interventions that combine legal-education components with environmental improvements to mitigate academic burnout.
Keywords: Legal Cognition, Academic burnout, Natural environment satisfaction, Legal education, Interdisciplinary perspective
Received: 17 Mar 2025; Accepted: 22 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang and XU. 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: Shuhui XU, miaowang90@wzu.edu.cn
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.