ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1640823
This article is part of the Research TopicDeterminants of Achievement in Top SportView all 30 articles
The Impact of Swimming Coaches' Authentic Leadership Coaching on Trust, Self-Efficacy, Service Quality, and Relationship Continuity Intention
Provisionally accepted
- Kyungdong University, Sokcho, Republic of Korea
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This study investigates how swimming coaches’ authentic leadership influences trust, self-efficacy, service quality, and relationship continuity intention among adult recreational swimmers in South Korea. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), it aims to provide insights for enhancing leadership practices in community sports. A total of 280 adult recreational swimmers participated in the survey, using validated scales on a 5-point Likert scale. Structural equation modeling and bootstrapping with 5,000 resamples were employed to analyze the relationships among authentic leadership, trust, self-efficacy, service quality, and relationship continuity intention. The SEM analysis demonstrated excellent model fit (χ²/df = 2.41, CFI = 0.95, TLI = 0.94, RMSEA = 0.059). Authentic leadership significantly influenced coach trust, which in turn positively affected self-efficacy and service quality. While Hypothesis 4 (coach trust → relationship continuity intention) was not supported, mediation analysis showed that self-efficacy and service quality significantly mediated the relationship, indicating that trust indirectly sustains participants’ continuity intention. Authentic leadership plays a vital role in fostering trust, self-efficacy, and service quality in community sports programs. These factors indirectly support participants’ sustained engagement, highlighting the importance of leadership development in enhancing the effectiveness of community-based swimming programs.
Keywords: Authentic leadership, Coach trust, self-efficacy, Service Quality, Relationshipcontinuity intention
Received: 04 Jun 2025; Accepted: 14 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kim. 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: Buom Kim, kbswim2442@gmail.com
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