Classroom innovation atmosphere and student creativity: the roles of AI technology application, intrinsic motivation, and self-efficacy

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.