Academic Stress, Digital Strain, and Athlete Burnout Among Female Collegiate Basketball Players: A PLS-SEM and fsQCA Study

Digital communication technologies expose student-athletes to implicit digital demands, yet their configurational impact alongside traditional stressors on burnout remains underexplored. Grounded in the JD-R model and Stress and Coping theory, this dual-method quantitative study (PLS-SEM and fsQCA) sampled female basketball players from the Chinese University Basketball Association League (CUBAL) to investigate how academic stress and digital strain associate with athlete burnout. PLS-SEM revealed that the composite construct of digital strain (integrating telepressure and technostress) acts as a significant indirect pathway linking academic stress and athlete burnout. Furthermore, fsQCA demonstrated that no single condition is necessary for high burnout; rather, specific combinations—such as high academic stress coupled with high techno-overload, or a purely “digital saturation” state—constitute configurations sufficiently associated with high burnout within this calibrated sample. Conversely, configurations associated with non-high burnout are asymmetrical, primarily relying on the concurrent absence of telepressure and techno-overload. Under the digital management paradigm, implicit digital strain acts as a critical proximal conduit for psychological exhaustion. The manifestation of high and non-high burnout is asymmetrical, depending on complex configurations of structural academic demands and digital expectations.