Social Responsibility Cognition, Attitudes, and Innovation Behavior among University Students in Ningxia: A Social Cognitive Approach
Downloads
Objective: This study examined how social responsibility cognition relates to social innovation behavior among university students in Ningxia and tested whether social responsibility attitudes mediate this relationship within an integrated Social Cognitive Theory–Theory of Planned Behavior (SCT–TPB) framework.
Methods and Materials: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 1,963 undergraduate students recruited from eight public universities in Ningxia using stratified random sampling by grade level. Social responsibility cognition (12 items) and attitudes (10 items) were adapted and pilot tested; social innovation behavior was measured using an 8-item scale. Construct validity was examined via CFA (AMOS), and group differences were assessed with t tests/ANOVAs with effect sizes and multiple-comparison corrections. Mediation was tested using Hayes’ PROCESS (Model 4) in SPSS (5,000 bootstrap samples).
Findings: Students reported moderately high levels of cognition, attitudes, and innovation behavior. Cognition, attitudes, and innovation behavior were strongly correlated (r≈.70–.88, p<.001). CFA supported the three-factor measurement model with acceptable fit. Gender and grade differences were statistically significant for cognition and attitudes but small in magnitude, and no meaningful gender×grade interaction effects were observed. Mediation analysis showed that attitudes partially mediated the cognition–innovation behavior link (indirect effect ≈0.52, 95% CI [0.43, 0.60]).
Conclusion: Strengthening students’ social responsibility cognition may promote social innovation behavior partly by improving social responsibility attitudes. Universities should combine cognitive–attitudinal interventions with opportunities for real-world social innovation practice.
Downloads
Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 50(2), 179-211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1986(23-28), 2. https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers?referenceid=1536371
Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual review of psychology, 52(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1
Bringle, R. G., & Steinberg, K. (2010). Educating for informed community involvement. American Journal of Community Psychology, 46(3), 428-441. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-010-9340-y
Brundiers, K., Barth, M., Cebrián, G., Cohen, M., Diaz, L., Doucette-Remington, S., Dripps, W., Habron, G., Harré, N., & Jarchow, M. (2021). Key competencies in sustainability in higher education—toward an agreed-upon reference framework. Sustainability science, 16(1), 13-29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-020-00838-2
Bufali, M. V., Calò, F., Morton, A., & Connelly, G. (2023). Scaling social innovation: A cross-cultural comparative study of school-based mentoring interventions. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1080/19420676.2023.2213715
Davis, S. L., Rives, L. M., & Ruiz‐de‐Maya, S. (2021). Personal social responsibility: Scale development and validation. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 28(2), 763-775. https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2086
Duong, C. D. (2025). Balancing social and institutional support: A cross-cultural study of social entrepreneurial intentions in Vietnam and Poland. Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 12, 101789. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2025.101789
Murray, R., Caulier-Grice, J., & Mulgan, G. (2010). The open book of social innovation (Vol. 24). Nesta, London. https://youngfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-Open-Book-of-Social-Innovationg.pdf
Phills Jr, J. A., Deiglmeier, K., & Miller, D. T. Home> Research By Topic> Rediscovering Social Innovation. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/rediscovering_social_innovation
Planells-Aleixandre, E., García-Aracil, A., & Isusi-Fagoaga, R. (2025). University’s contribution to society: benchmarking of social innovation. Sustainability, 17(8), 3427. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17083427
Shek, D. T., & Chai, W. (2020). The impact of positive youth development attributes and life satisfaction on academic well-being: A longitudinal mediation study. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 2126. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02126
Zhou, Z., Shek, D. T., & Zhu, X. (2020). The importance of positive youth development attributes to life satisfaction and hopelessness in mainland Chinese adolescents. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 553313. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.553313
Copyright (c) 2026 International Journal of Body, Mind and Culture
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
