The Impact of Self-leadership on College Students’ College Life Adaptation: Verifying the Mediating Effect of Emotional Intelligence

Adapting to college life during one's college years is recognized as a variable that has a significant impact on an individual's life, as it acts as a factor in growing into a responsible member of society in adulthood. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the impact of college students' self-leadership on their adaptation to college life and to verify the mediating effect of emotional intelligence by applying a structural path model based on self-leadership theory. In addition, based on empirical analysis of the relationships between these variables, the study aimed to explore practical intervention measures to improve college students' adaptation to college life. The research method involved conducting a survey from March to May 2025 targeting university students enrolled at universities located in Busan Metropolitan City and Gyeongsangnam-do Province. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 21.0 programs based on data from 293 respondents with no missing values. The results of the study are as follows. First, it was found that the higher the level of self-leadership, the higher the level of adaptation to college life. Second, it was found that the higher the level of self-leadership, the higher the level of emotional intelligence. Third, it was found that the higher the level of emotional intelligence, the higher the level of adaptation to college life. Fourth, in the indirect path analysis, we confirmed that emotional intelligence factors had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between self-leadership and adaptation to college life. This shows that cultivating self-leadership during college helps you grow into a self-driven person, lets you control your thoughts and actions with autonomy and self-regulation, and makes it easier to adjust to college life. Also, self-leadership-based thinking boosts your emotional intelligence in a positive and active way and helps you adjust to college life. Therefore, these empirical research results are expected to be applied to practical programs in educational settings and psychological counseling settings that are responsible for promoting self-leadership and improving emotional intelligence among college students who are preparing to enter society.