Self-Efficacy Meets Creativity: How the Dual Moderating Roles of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Shape Innovative Outcomes

Despite the growing emphasis on the role of creativity, the underlying mechanisms associating self-efficacy and creativity with certain mediating roles remain partly ambiguous. Generally defined as having the skill to make something new and original, creativity is commonly acknowledged as a construct having many ties in common with several realms. This study aims to discover its relationship with self-efficacy through the mediating roles of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The Marmara Creative Thinking Dispositions Scale, The Academic Self-Efficacy Scale, and The Academic Motivation Scale were used for collecting the data and they were administered to a total of 197 participants attending a university in İstanbul in the academic year of 2023-2024. The study followed a quantitative approach and mediation analysis was employed to examine the mediating roles through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The findings revealed that except for the link between creativity and extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy correlated with creativity in a positive and significant way. As for the mediating roles, while there was a positive and significant effect of intrinsic motivation on the relationship between self-efficacy and creativity (β = 0.155, t = 0.664, p < 0.01), a significant but negative mediating role of extrinsic motivation (β = -0.064, t = -2.096, p < 0.05) was observed. The practical implications and interpretations of the findings are further discussed.