Academic Procrastination and Negative Emotions Among Adolescents During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Mediating and Buffering Effects of Online-Shopping Addiction

Abstract

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2019 has had a significant impact on people’s learning and their lives, including a significant increase in the incidence of academic procrastination and negative emotions. The topic of how negative emotions influences academic procrastination has been long debated, and previous research has revealed a significant relationship between the two. The purpose of this study was to further investigate the mediating and buffering effects of online-shopping addiction on academic procrastination and negative emotions.MethodsThe researchers conducted a correlation analysis followed by a mediation analysis and developed a mediation model. The study used stratified sampling and an online questionnaire as the data collection method. In this study, first, five freshmen students at vocational and technical colleges in Guangdong Province, China, were called to distribute the questionnaire. Second, after communicating with them individually, first-year students of Guangdong origin were selected as participants. Finally, 423 freshman students participated by completing the questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 4 parts: demographic information, an online-shopping-addiction scale, an academic-procrastination scale and a negative-emotions scale. A total of 423 students, 118 males (27.9%) and 305 females (72.1%) from 10 vocational and technical colleges in Guangdong were surveyed. SPSS 25.0 was used to process and analyze the data. The data collected were self-reported.ResultsThe results showed that: first, academic procrastination was significantly and positively associated with online-shopping addiction (r = 0.176, p < 0.01). Second, academic procrastination was significantly and positively associated with negative emotions (r = 0.250, p < 0.01). Third, online-shopping addiction was significantly and positively associated with negative emotions (r = 0.358, p < 0.01). In addition, academic procrastination had a significant positive predictive effect on online-shopping addiction (β = 0.1955, t = 3.6622, p < 0.001). Online-shopping addiction had a significant positive predictive effect on negative emotions (β = 0.4324, t = 7.1437, p < 0.001).ConclusionThis study explored the relationship between students’ academic procrastination, negative emotions, and online-shopping addiction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results indicated that students’ level of academic procrastination positively influenced their level of online-shopping addiction and negative emotions, and their level of online-shopping addiction increased their negative emotions. In addition, there was a mediating effect between the degree of participants’ online-shopping addiction and their degree of academic procrastination and negative emotions during the pandemic. In other words, with the mediating effect of online-shopping addiction, the higher the level of a participant’s academic procrastination, the more likely that the participant would have a high score for negative emotions.

Internet and depression in adolescents: Evidence from China

“…Researchers in China generally agree that Internet pushing shopping will reduce subjective happiness and may lead to depression among college students in China ( Yu et al, 2019 ). Wang et al (2022) found that online shopping addiction was significantly and positively associated with negative emotions among adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic in China ( He et al, 2019 ). Thus, based on the previously published data, the following two hypotheses are proposed:…”

The psychological impact of COVID-19 lockdown on the wellbeing, learning efficacy and sleeping behaviors of Romanian medical students

“…negative differences between quarantine and pre-quarantine values, were directly associated with (quarantine v. pre-quarantine) changes in procrastination. We found negative associations between the evolution of procrastination and that of self-organization (r=−0,52) and mood (r=−0,28), which might indicate that procrastination is linked to reduced life satisfaction, as suggested by [ 9 , 28 , 55 , 56 ]. As expected, changes in mood were rather strongly correlated with the difference between quarantine and pre-quarantine values of self-organization (r=0.53) and learning efficacy learning efficacy (r=0.52).…”

“…According to some studies, academic procrastination is described as a failure in self-regulation [ 51 ], and is strongly correlated with (perceived) stress, anxiety-provoking situations, and life regrets [ 9 , 28 , 52 – 55 ]. In our study, we hypothesized that alterations of wellbeing indicators (learning efficacy learning efficacy, mood, self-organization), i.e.…”

“…Low mood, fear of uncertainty, lack of energy due to insufficient sleep, and sedentarism [ 26 ] have been identified as causes of procrastination, itself a way of avoiding stress and anxiety [ 20 , 27 , 28 ].…”

“Time is My Own Treasure”: Parental Autonomy Support and Academic Procrastination Among Chinese Adolescents

“…2 It can be regarded as a motivational problem that involves more than poor time management skills or trait laziness. 3 Studies have shown that academic procrastination not only affects students' academic performance [4][5][6] but also may cause them negative emotions, 7 such as anxiety about exams and academic tasks. 8,9 In addition, some researchers have found that there is also a significant relationship between academic procrastination and externalizing problems in forms such as problematic internet usage.…”