Fair Learning Environment and Financial Well-Being as Resources for Students’ Academic Engagement: Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction as a Common Motivational Pathway

Academic engagement is associated with the resources available to students, yet it remains unclear through which psychological processes resources of different origins are related to academic engagement. Bringing together Basic Psychological Needs Theory and the Study Demands–Resources framework, this study examined whether autonomy, relatedness, and competence satisfaction mediate the associations of an institutional resource, a fair learning environment, and a resource rooted outside the academic environment, subjective financial well-being, with academic engagement. The measures were first evaluated using data from 278 university students. The structural model, specifying the three needs as parallel mediators, was then tested in a subsequent, non-overlapping sample of 741 students in Türkiye. Both resources positively predicted all three need satisfaction dimensions, whereas academic engagement was predicted only by autonomy (β = 0.43) and competence satisfaction (β = 0.36); relatedness satisfaction made no significant unique contribution. Neither resource was directly associated with academic engagement. The total indirect effects were β = 0.31 for a fair learning environment and β = 0.13 for subjective financial well-being. The model explained 47.4% of the variance in academic engagement. Resources of different origin were indirectly associated with academic engagement through the same two needs, autonomy and competence satisfaction.