The Relationship Between Perceived Loafing and Academic Engagement and Disengagement in Group Projects among College Students: The Mediating Role of Task Costs and a Gender-Based Multi-Group Analysis

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between perceived loafing and both academic engagement and disengagement in group projects among college students, and to investigate the mediating role of task costs (effort costs, opportunity costs, emotional costs) as well as gender differences in these relationships. Data from 500 undergraduates at four-year universities nationwide were collected via a self-report questionnaire. Analyses included descriptive statistics, correlation analyses, and structural equation modeling (SEM) using SPSS 25.0 and Mplus 7.1. The results showed that perceived loafing was negatively associated with academic engagement and positively associated with academic disengagement. Bootstrapping analyses revealed that effort cost partially mediated the relationships between perceived loafing and both academic engagement and disengagement. Specifically, perceived loafing was directly associated with lower academic engagement, but it was indirectly associated with higher academic engagement through effort cost. Similarly, perceived loafing was directly associated with greater academic disengagement but was indirectly associated with lower academic disengagement through effort cost. Additionally, perceived loafing was indirectly associated with higher academic disengagement via emotional cost. Finally, the multi-group analysis by gender showed that the mediated associations via effort cost—linking perceived loafing to higher academic engagement and lower academic disengagement—were significant only among female students. These findings highlight the importance of perceived loafing in group project contexts and indicate that support considering task costs and gender differences is essential for enhancing engagement and reducing disengagement.