Self-efficacy mediates and sensation seeking moderates the association between water safety knowledge and high-risk swimming behaviors in preadolescents

Abstract Swimming-related hazards are sudden, unpredictable, and irreversible, and preadolescent children are particularly susceptible to irrational judgments and high-risk behaviors in aquatic environments. Grounded in the dual systems model and risk compensation theory, this study analyzed questionnaire data from 1573 preadolescent children with a mean age of 11.32 ± 0.49 years. Regression-based conditional process analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) were combined to clarify the linear associations and multifactorial configurational mechanisms underlying preadolescent children’s engagement in high-risk swimming behaviors. (1) Water safety knowledge was significantly and negatively associated with high-risk swimming behaviors after gender, age, and grade level were controlled. (2) Self-efficacy mediated this association competitively: the indirect association through self-efficacy was positive, opposite in sign to the negative direct association, yielding a competitive (inconsistent) mediation pattern. (3) Sensation seeking positively moderated the second stage of this mediation pathway. (4) In the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, no single factor constituted a necessary condition for high-risk swimming behaviors; two configurations were associated with high-risk swimming behaviors and two with non-high-risk swimming behaviors. Water safety knowledge shows a “double-edged sword” pattern of associations with preadolescent children’s high-risk swimming behaviors: it is directly associated with lower levels of such behaviors but is also indirectly associated with higher risk-taking through swimming self-efficacy, and this indirect association is significantly stronger among individuals high in sensation seeking. These findings suggest that safety education based solely on knowledge dissemination is insufficient; differentiated interventions should be tailored to children’s self-efficacy and sensation-seeking levels.