Objective Growing concern has emerged regarding the mental health of young adults, particularly within university settings where academic and psychosocial pressures are prominent. Exercise motivation (EM), conceptualized within self-determination theory (SDT), especially intrinsic and identified regulation, has been associated with psychological well-being. However, the structural associations among exercise motivation (EM), leisure satisfaction (LS), psychological resilience (PR), and self-efficacy (SE) in young adults remain insufficiently clarified. Methods This cross-sectional study examined these associations in a sample of 437 university students aged 18–23 years in China. Data were collected through validated self-report instruments and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Results The results indicated that exercise motivation was positively associated with leisure satisfaction (β = 0.794, p 0.001), leisure satisfaction was positively associated with psychological resilience (β = 0.342, p 0.001), and PR was positively associated with self-efficacy (β = 0.228, p 0.001). Sequential mediation analysis showed that leisure satisfaction and PR jointly accounted for a significant indirect association between EM and SE (β = 0.062, p = 0.001). Model fit indices ( SRMR = 0.055; NFI = 0.847) indicated an acceptable level of fit within the prediction-oriented PLS-SEM approach. Conclusion These findings indicate that exercise motivation is statistically associated with psychological resources among young adults. Although causal inferences cannot be drawn due to the cross-sectional design, the study contributes to understanding motivational processes within the SDT framework and provides directions for future longitudinal research.
Li et al. (Wed,) studied this question.