Building a sense of community in service-learning and its association with college students’ prosocial behavior and social responsibility

Introduction Although service-learning is widely used in higher education, the psychological mechanisms through which it is associated with students’ social development remain unclear. The present research aims to examine whether a sense of community mediates the relationship between the quality of service-learning and students’ prosocial behavior and social responsibility. Methods A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with 735 Chinese university students who had participated in service-learning. Structural equation modeling and the Bootstrap method were utilized to test the mediation effects, and independent samples t-tests were used to analyze the impact of team size. Results The results showed that: (1) the quality of service-learning was significantly and positively correlated with a sense of community ( r = 0.582, p < 0.001 ); (2) sense of community partially mediated the association between service-learning quality and social responsibility, with the mediation effect accounting for 47.8% of the total effect (indirect effect = 0.244, 95% CI [0.189, 0.302]); (3) the mediation effect of sense of community on the association with prosocial behavior accounted for 62.1% of the total effect; and (4) team size had a significant impact on the sense of community, with small teams (2–10 members) scoring significantly higher than large teams ( t = 7.93, p < 0.001 ). Discussion The present research provides a preliminary exploration of the role of sense of community in service-learning, finding that it functions as a key mechanism linking the external educational environment to the student’s internal value system. The findings suggest that by building an emotional community, educators can help students rediscover engagement and meaning in learning, thereby facilitating a shift from passive participation to active commitment.