Academic motivation and burnout among Chinese doctoral students: the mediating role of academic resilience and the moderating role of perceived stress.

Background: Academic burnout is a persistent concern in doctoral education, but the associations among doctoral students' motivation, resilience, stress, and burnout may depend on how motivational resources operate under demanding conditions. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory and Conservation of Resources theory, this study examined whether academic resilience statistically mediated the association between academic motivation and academic burnout, and whether perceived stress moderated the motivation-resilience association. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was completed by 525 currently enrolled doctoral students in China. Academic motivation was operationalized as a nine-item composite reflecting intrinsic interest, instrumental reasons for doctoral study, and clarity of purpose/low amotivation. Academic resilience, perceived stress, and academic burnout were assessed with context-adapted self-report measures. Regression models corresponding to PROCESS Models 4 and 7 were estimated with 5,000 bootstrap resamples while controlling for gender, training stage, discipline, and marital status. Results: Academic motivation was negatively associated with burnout (total effect Conclusion: Stronger academic motivation and resilience were associated with lower reported burnout, and the indirect association through resilience was statistically significant. The motivation-resilience association also varied across levels of perceived stress, although the observed direction differed from the original hypothesis. Given the cross-sectional design, adapted self-report measures, and very high intercorrelations among the focal variables, these findings should be regarded as preliminary evidence of conditional associations rather than as evidence of a distinct psychological process.