Cognitive mediation or direct experience?

International students build global competence in settings that combine formal instruction with dense everyday intercultural contact, yet the mechanisms through which this capacity forms remain poorly specified. Work that treats self-efficacy as the psychological engine of global competence has generally assumed, without testing, that every antecedent operates through that single cognitive route. This study asks whether teacher support, openness to experience, intergroup contact, and foreign language proficiency shape global competence through one mechanism or two, integrating Social Cognitive Theory with Intergroup Contact Theory to specify a dual-pathway alternative. Cross-sectional survey data were collected from 509 Chinese degree-seeking students at the eight Thai universities hosting the largest Chinese enrollments and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling, with global competence modeled as a second-order construct. All four antecedents predicted global competence, but through mechanisms of different kinds. Teacher support and openness operated both directly and indirectly through general self-efficacy, producing complementary mediation. Intergroup contact and foreign language proficiency operated through direct paths only; neither indirect effect reached significance, a pattern consistent with the principle that efficacy beliefs predict outcomes in the domain to which they correspond. Self-efficacy mediation therefore has identifiable boundary conditions rather than universal reach. Institutions hosting international students should build efficacy beliefs where the cognitive pathway operates, and create authentic contact and language-use opportunities where the experiential pathway prevails.