The mediating effect of cognitive interference on the relation between university social environment and academic procrastination

The high prevalence of procrastination in the academic setting has led to a large body of research focusing on the contribution of dispositional factors such as personality to academic procrastination. Nevertheless, considerably less attention has been given to social environmental factors that may elicit such behaviour. Therefore, the current study aims to examine the mediating effect of cognitive interference that arose from school-leisure conflict on the relation between social environment and academic procrastination. The sample of this study was 55 Hong Kong undergraduate students, and a simple regression approach was adopted to examine the mediating effect. Among the three social environmental factors investigated, namely peer procrastination, peer influence and exposure at university, peer influence is found to play a major role in predicting academic procrastination and school-leisure conflict. The results also suggest that the relation between peer influence and academic procrastination is mediated by the cognitive interference that arose from schoolleisure conflict. In order to help students reduce or overcome academic procrastination, it is suggested that schools can promote a positive attitude towards learning and help students reduce school-leisure conflict through increasing students’ self-determined motivation, as well as teaching self-regulation and time management skills.