Self-efficacy as the moderator: Exploring driving factors of perceived social support for mainland Chinese students in Taiwan

Abstract

More and more mainland Chinese college students study in Taiwan. Social support is one of the main factors helping them study and live happily in Taiwan. This study aims to investigate the relationships among self-efficacy, social identity, and perceived social support through online social networks in helping mainland Chinese college students improve their adaption ability of diversified campuses in Taiwan. We assume social identity affects positively perceived social support, and self-efficacy served as a moderator of the relationships between social identify and social support. A convenience sample of 366 mainland Chinese students from five universities in Taiwan was conducted to validate the hypotheses. The results revealed that affective and cognitive identification were significantly and positively related to perceived emotional, tangible and informational support. The moderator, self-efficacy, was shown to moderate the three relationships from affective identification to emotional, tangible and informational support. Also, it moderated the relationships from cognitive identification to tangible support, but not the relationships from cognitive identification to emotional and informational support. The suggestions for Taiwanese host universities to lighten the stress of study adaptation of mainland Chinese college students are provided.