Creativity is a key capability that drives innovation and solves complex problems, serving as an important pathway to realizing personal potential. Based on social cognitive theory, this study constructs a theoretical model with classroom innovation atmosphere as the independent variable, student creativity as the dependent variable, AI technology application and intrinsic motivation as mediating variables, and self-efficacy as the moderating variable. A survey was conducted among 270 college students from the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region, and Hayes’s PROCESS macro (Model 7) was employed to perform Bootstrap sampling (sample size = 5,000) for testing. The results show that: classroom innovation atmosphere has a significant positive impact on student creativity ( β = 0.182, p 0.01); AI technology application (indirect effect = 0.0267, 95% CI 0.0034, 0.0598) and intrinsic motivation (indirect effect = 0.1029, 95% CI 0.0281, 0.1820) play significant mediating roles between classroom innovation atmosphere and creativity; self-efficacy not only positively moderates the relationship between classroom innovation atmosphere and AI technology application ( β = 0.339, p 0.05) as well as intrinsic motivation ( β = 0.083, p 0.05), but also moderates the indirect effects mediated by AI technology application and intrinsic motivation (moderated mediation indices were 0.0373, 95% CI 0.0023, 0.1195 and 0.6574, 95% CI 0.2512, 0.8066, respectively). The findings enhance the understanding of the relationship between classroom innovation atmosphere and student creativity, providing theoretical foundations and practical insights for educators to foster student creativity.
Jiang et al. (2025) studied this question.