ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicEmotional Intelligence in Youth Sports: Enhancing Performance, Coaching, and Well-BeingView all 8 articles
The Threshold Moderating Effect of Self-Efficacy: A Nonlinear Transformation Mechanism of Work Passion on Job Satisfaction Among Sports Practitioners
Provisionally accepted
- School of Economics and Management, YanCheng Institute of Technology, YanCheng 224051, China, anCheng, 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
Despite the global sports industry's growth, practitioners face a systemic satisfaction crisis inadequately explained by traditional linear models (e.g., JD-R model) or existing nonlinear frameworks (e.g., COR theory's resource caravans), which fail to capture sport-specific dynamics and threshold effects of key cognitive resources. Focusing on China's unique high-pressure context (e.g., policy shifts like the "Double Reduction"), this study proposes and validates the Passion-Efficacy Synergistic Gain (PESG) framework, positioning self-efficacy (SE) as a critical nonlinear cognitive transformer moderating the passion-satisfaction link. Using multi-wave longitudinal data from 1,384 Chinese sports practitioners (coaches, athletes, technical staff), we employed threshold regression and 3D response surface analysis (RSA). Work passion was measured as a composite score representing total affective investment (mean of Harmonious Passion, HP, and Obsessive Passion, OP, subscale totals), capturing overall motivational resource magnitude.
Keywords: Work passion, Job Satisfaction, self-efficacy, nonlinear mechanisms, sports practitioners
Received: 16 Jul 2025; Accepted: 27 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kunyan. 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: Wang Kunyan, wangkid1989@163.com
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.