University Students’ Coping with Compulsory Extracurricular Activities Through the Lens of Self-Determination Theory

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_39How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Self-determination Theory; Coping Strategies; University Students; Compulsory Extracurricular Activities; Basic Psychological Needs

Abstract

This study takes college students’ coping with daily extracurricular activities as the starting point, uses the self-determination theory framework, and conducts qualitative research on six undergraduates of a science and engineering specialized university through semi-structured interviews, and examines their evaluation and behavior adjustment methods for school-arranged daily extracurricular activities. Students generally summarize the experience of compulsory activities with “meaningless”, which is manifested in the formalization of process orientation, the ambiguity of income and cost of input-output imbalance, and the participation load of encroaching on private time. The above experience forms a closed loop of psychological need frustration through the interaction of the three dimensions. At the behavioral level, respondents have formed three coping modes, including various ways to manage time, redefine the purposes of the events, and selectively attend the activities. These strategies are not derived from value identity, but students’ adaptive survival skills under institutional pressure. The paper sheds lights to the understanding of self-determination theory in low-intensity and high-frequency stressors in university extracurricular settings, and suggestions are provided for university to help improve the mental well beings of students.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Haoxiang Zhang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/07
TI  - University Students’ Coping with Compulsory Extracurricular Activities Through the Lens of Self-Determination Theory
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 12th International Conference on Digital Humanities and Frontiers in Social Sciences (DHFSS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 348
EP  - 358
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_39
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_39
ID  - Zhang2026
ER  -