ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1695619
This article is part of the Research TopicPsychological Factors in Physical Education and Sport - Volume VIView all 33 articles
The Effect of Regulating Focus Tendencies on College Students' sports anomie behavior: The Mediating Role of Autonomous and Controlled Motivation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Henan Medical University, Xinxiang, China
- 2Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China
- 3Qingdao Harbour Vocational and Technical College, Qingdao, China
- 4Fujian Jiangxia University, Fuzhou, China
- 5Fujian Provincial Institute of Sports Science, fuzhou, China
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A survey was conducted with 2,128 university students using the Long-Term Regulatory Focus Scale, the Behavioral Regulation in Sport Questionnaire, and the College Students’ Sports Anomie Behavior Scale. The study examined the mediating roles of autonomous and controlled motivation in the relationship between regulatory focus and sports anomie behavior through structural equation modeling. The results indicated that: (1) promotion focus was significantly positively correlated with autonomous motivation, whereas prevention focus was significantly positively correlated with controlled motivation; (2) promotion focus and autonomous motivation were significant negative predictors of sports anomie behavior, while prevention focus and controlled motivation were significant positive predictors; and (3) autonomous motivation partially mediated the relationship between promotion focus and sports anomie behavior, and controlled motivation partially mediated the relationship between prevention focus and sports anomie behavior.
Keywords: promotion focus, prevention focus, Autonomous Motivation, controlledmotivation, sports anomie behavior
Received: 30 Aug 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma, Lu, Gu, Xu and Chen. 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: Mingliang Chen, mlchen1987@163.com
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