The impact of artificial intelligence perception on university students' academic engagement: the mediating role of academic motivation and the moderating role of academic self-efficacy

Objective: To test whether academic motivation mediates the association between artificial intelligence (AI) perception and university students' academic engagement, and whether academic self-efficacy moderates the direct and indirect associations. Design: Cross-sectional, single-wave, self-administered questionnaire survey; all variables were assessed once at a single time point in a convenience sample of university students in Anhui, China. Method: A convenience sample of 1,484 university students in Anhui Province completed an anonymous questionnaire measuring AI perception, academic engagement, academic motivation, and academic self-efficacy. Descriptive statistics, correlations, and regression-based mediation and moderated mediation analyses were conducted. Results: AI-related perceptions were negatively associated with academic engagement, and academic motivation partially mediated this association. Academic self-efficacy moderated both the direct association and the indirect pathway via motivation: when self-efficacy was lower, the negative association between AI-related perceptions and engagement was stronger and the motivation-engagement association was weaker; when self-efficacy was higher, the opposite pattern emerged, and the indirect effect via motivation was stronger. Conclusion: AI-related perceptions were inversely associated with academic engagement partly through academic motivation, and these associations varied by academic self-efficacy. Given the cross-sectional, self-report design, the findings are correlational and require longitudinal or experimental verification.