The serial mediating effects of mindfulness and emotion regulation between physical exercise and subjective well-being in college students

To explore the pathways through which exercise promotes subjective well-being among college students, and to build a chain mediation model including exercise, subjective well-being, mindfulness, and emotion regulation. The interactions and influence paths among the variables were verified to gain a deeper understanding of the internal mechanism of exercise on subjective well-being among college students. Using stratified cluster sampling, 701 college students from 11 universities in China were surveyed using a questionnaire. The core variables were measured using the exercise engagement scale, the subjective well-being scale, the mindful attention awareness scale, and the emotion regulation questionnaire. SPSS 26.0 was used to analyze the data, which included Pearson correlation analysis, structural equation model testing, and the bias-corrected percentile bootstrap method. (1) The direct effect of exercise on subjective well-being was not significant (β = - 0.04, p > 0.05, H1 was not established). (2) Mindfulness (β = 0.28 → 0.17, p < 0.01, CI [0.03, 0.07]) and emotion regulation (β = 0.11 → 0.62, p < 0.01, CI [0.03, 0.12]) played independent mediating roles between exercise and subjective well-being, accounting for 23.81% and 33.33% of the mediating effects, respectively, and H2 and H3 were established. (3) Chain mediation effects: Mindfulness indirectly improved subjective well-being by enhancing emotion regulation, with the path being "exercise → mindfulness → emotion regulation → subjective well-being" (β = 0.54 → 0.62, p < 0.01, CI [0.06, 0.13]), accounting for 42.86% of the mediating effect, and H4 was established. The total mediating effect accounted for 79.05% of the total effect (total effect β = 0.21). (1) Sport exercise has a significant positive impact on the subjective well-being of college students. Research shows that there is a complex mediating mechanism of the impact of sport exercise on subjective well-being. (2) Mindfulness has an independent positive mediating effect between sport exercise and subjective well-being, and sport exercise can improve the subjective well-being of college students with the improvement of mindfulness level. (3) Emotion regulation has an independent mediating effect between sport exercise and subjective well-being. College students can promote the generation of positive emotions in the process of sport exercise, which is conducive to maintaining high subjective well-being. (4) Mindfulness and emotion regulation have a chain mediating effect between sport exercise and subjective well-being. Effectively improving college students' mindfulness level and emotion regulation ability can help to improve the subjective well-being of the contemporary college students steadily.