Is aiming high always a good thing? A behavioral model of aspiration failure with evidence from lower-secondary students in China

While extensive research has focused on the impact of educational expectations on academic performance, limited studies have explored the behavioral implications of educational aspirations, which are often presumed to have a monotonically increasing motivational effect. Challenging this conventional view, we leverage recent developments in economic theory to explore the non-monotonic motivational effect of educational aspirations, introducing the concept of “aspiration failure.” We propose a behavioral model that captures this motivational effect within a framework of decision-making under uncertainty, distinguishing between aspirations and expectations. Through regression analysis of data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), we investigate how educational aspirations influence student effort and subsequent academic performance. Our findings reveal an overall positive and increasing motivational effect, after adjusting for multiple socioeconomic and psychological factors. Subgroup analysis indicates that low-achieving students with aspirations for a bachelor’s degree demonstrate greater effort and achieve better outcomes compared with those aiming for a master’s degree or higher, highlighting aspirational failure in the educational context. Consequently, we suggest that students can reach higher levels of behavioral motivation and academic success by adjusting their educational aspirations to more realistic levels instead of pursuing overly ambitious goals.