Music learning motivation and students' musical creative performance: the sequential mediating roles of creative self-efficacy and learning engagement.

This study examined whether autonomous music learning motivation was prospectively associated with university students' demonstrated musical creative performance through temporally ordered indirect associations involving creative self-efficacy and learning engagement. A four-wave prospective design was employed with undergraduate students enrolled in music-related courses at one university in China, with 368 complete and valid cases retained for the primary analyses. Music learning motivation was assessed at Time 1, creative self-efficacy at Time 2, learning engagement at Time 3, and musical creative performance at Time 4 through a standardized composition task independently evaluated by three trained experts. Baseline creative performance and relevant background characteristics were controlled in the structural model. The proposed sequential indirect pathway from motivation to creative performance through creative self-efficacy and learning engagement was statistically supported (β = 0.052, 95% bootstrap CI [0.031, 0.078]), whereas the remaining direct association between motivation and final performance was not statistically significant after the mediators were included. The findings were consistent with a prospective pathway in which higher autonomous music learning motivation was associated with stronger subsequent creative self-efficacy and learning engagement, which in turn were associated with better expert-rated musical creative performance. However, the prospective observational design does not establish causal mediation, and broader generalization requires replication across institutions and learner populations.