Understanding the role of peer pressure on engineering students' learning behavior: A TPB perspective

作者：Xu Lin, Jingxiao Zhang, Yiying Ding, Junwei Zheng, Gangzhu Sun, Zhang Wei, Simon P. Philbin · 发表于：Frontiers in Public Health · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.3389/fpubh.2022.1069384 · 被引用次数：22 · 研究领域：Education, Achievement, and Giftedness、Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods、Learning Styles and Cognitive Differences

Introduction: With the advent of the digital age, the gradually increasing demands of the engineering job market make it inevitable that engineering students face the pressures that arise from academic life with their peers. To address this issue, this study aims to explore the influence of engineering students' peer pressure on learning behavior based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Methods: In addition to attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral controls inherent in TPB, two new dimensions-gender difference and peer academic ability-were incorporated to construct a framework of the dimensions of peer pressure as affecting engineering students as well as an expanded model of TPB. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 160 college engineering students and a structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses. Results: The result showed that positive peer pressure can increase engineering students' learning intention and thus promote learning behavior. It was also determined that the TPB model can effectively explain the effect of peer pressure on learning behavior, in addition to expanding and reshaping the relationship between the attitudinal dimension in the TPB model. Discussion: From the results, it is clear that positive attitudes toward learning can trigger positive peer pressure. Good group norms can induce peer pressure through rewards and punishments as a way to motivate students' learning intention and learning behaviors. When pe...