ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicProtective vs Risk Factors for Stress and Psychological Well-being in Academic University ContextsView all 37 articles
The Influence Mechanism of Academic Involution Behavior Among Chinese College Students: A Moderated Mediation Analysis Based on the JD-R Model
Provisionally accepted
- 1UCSI University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- 2UCSI University Faculty of Business and Management, Cheras, Malaysia
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
This study focuses on the association between perceived employability and academic involution behavior among Chinese university students in the context of increasingly intense employment competition, and examines the mediating and moderating roles of academic anxiety and upward social comparison. Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) model, four key variables—perceived employability, academic involution behavior, academic anxiety, and upward social comparison—were constructed and measured using standardized questionnaires administered to 498 Chinese undergraduates. Structural equation modeling revealed that perceived employability exerted a significant effect on academic involution behavior through upward social comparison, with the indirect effect accounting for 11% of the total effect. Further moderation analyses indicated that academic anxiety played a significant moderating role along one path of the model. Through rigorous quantitative analyses, this study confirms the applicability of the JD–R model in academic contexts among university students, elucidates the psychological mechanism through which perceived employability influences competitive academic behaviors via social comparison processes, and offers practical implications for alleviating academic stress and fostering more adaptive forms of competition among university students.
Keywords: Academic anxiety, academic involution behavior, Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) model, perceived employability, upward social comparison
Received: 21 Oct 2025; Accepted: 11 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 JI and Li. 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: XIANGWEN JI
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.