The impact of team cohesion on athlete engagement in collegiate basketball leagues: the moderating role of paternalistic leadership
Open accessAbstract
Objective: This study investigates the impact of team cohesion on the engagement of college basketball players, and examines the moderating effects of authoritarian, benevolent, and moral leadership styles within paternalistic leadership on this influence. This provides theoretical insights for improving athlete engagement. Methods: Data from 404 athletes participating in the 26th China Collegiate Basketball League were collected through a questionnaire survey and analyzed statistically. Results: (1) Team cohesion has a significant positive impact on athlete engagement in collegiate basketball players. (2) Authoritarian leadership has a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between team cohesion and athlete engagement in collegiate basketball players; the stronger the authoritarian leadership, the weaker the positive impact of team cohesion on athlete engagement in collegiate basketball players. This effect diminishes and becomes statistically insignificant when the authoritarian leadership score exceeds 5.88. (3) Benevolent leadership does not have a significant moderating effect between team cohesion and athlete engagement in collegiate basketball players. (4) Moral leadership has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between team cohesion and athlete engagement in collegiate basketball players; the higher the moral leadership, the stronger the positive impact of team cohesion on athlete engagement in collegiate basketball players, which becomes insignificant when the moral leadership score is below 2.75. Conclusion: Enhancing team cohesion is an effective method to increase athlete engagement in collegiate basketball players. It is advisable for collegiate basketball coaches to refrain from adopting controlling and demeaning authoritative approaches, and instead, emphasize ethical leadership practices, continually enhancing their own abilities and virtues to serve as role models.
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Sports science students represent an appropriate sample for this research due to their high levels of social media engagement and group-oriented social contexts.
“Sports science students represent an appropriate sample for this research due to their high levels of social media engagement and group-oriented social contexts (Wang et al., 2024).”
From Fear of missing out and psychological well-being: Examining the dual pathways of problematic social media use and digital burnout (2026) · cites this paper as Wang et al., 2024
The Theoretical review section describes team cohesion as a social context for athletes, and the Study sample section identifies the participants as collegiate basketball athletes. The paper does not establish that sports science students are an appropriate sample or that they have high social media engagement (searched: social media engagement, sports science students). No page numbers were available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.78)
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“Wang, Xu, and Liu (2024) found that team cohesion had a direct positive impact on athlete engagement in collegiate basketball players, a factor often diminished during performance downturns.”
- Authors
- Wang, L., Xu, J., & Liu, Y.
- Affiliations
- Fujian Normal University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Xu, Jianhua
- ORCID
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2024-12-10
- Volume
- 15
- Pages
- 1473506-1473506
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC11668273
- OpenAlex
- W4405233645
- Cited by
- 6
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4
- FWCI
- 4.68
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Xiamen University
- Fujian Normal University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Sport Psychology and Performance
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Motivation and Self-Concept in Sports
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior
- Keywords
- team cohesion, athlete engagement, paternalistic leadership, authoritarian leadership, benevolent leadership, moral leadership, leadership styles, moderating effect, college basketball, basketball coaches, ethical leadership
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