How positive psychological capital is associated with academic resilience: investigating the sequential mediating effects of academic and coping self-efficacy among undergraduates.

BACKGROUND: Undergraduate students frequently experience persistent academic pressure and uncertainty, making academic resilience a critical protective factor for mental health issues. Building on positive psychology, this study examined whether psychological capital (PsyCap) enhances academic resilience directly and indirectly through a sequential process involving academic self-efficacy and coping self-efficacy. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey design was used with undergraduate participants from a Chinese university. Validated scales were used to measure PsyCap, academic self-efficacy, coping self-efficacy and academic resilience. Correlation analyses and chain mediation modeling (bootstrapping) were conducted to test the direct, parallel, and sequential indirect effects while controlling for basic demographic variables. RESULTS: Psychological capital was positively associated with academic resilience and efficacy. Mediation analysis showed that academic and coping self-efficacy significantly mediated the relationship between PsyCap and resilience. More importantly, a significant chain pathway was identified: PsyCap was positively associated with higher academic self-efficacy, which was positively related to coping self-efficacy, which, in turn, was associated with higher academic resilience. This highlights the theoretical significance of the sequential pathway, despite its modest quantitative contribution, particularly in terms of intervention sequencing. CONCLUSION: Psychological capital functions as an upstream psychological resource that is structurally linked to academic resilience through independent and sequential efficacy mechanisms. Interventions that simultaneously cultivate PsyCap, domain-specific confidence in learning tasks, and confidence in handling stressors may produce stronger gains in undergraduate resilience and long-term academic adaptation.