Coach leadership behavior and athlete engagement among Chinese competitive basketball athletes: the parallel mediating roles of sport confidence and team cohesion

Objective This study examined the association between coach leadership behavior and athlete engagement among Chinese competitive basketball athletes and assessed parallel indirect associations through sport confidence and perceived team cohesion. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 450 National Level I and II basketball athletes recruited from Sichuan, Chongqing, and Shandong, China. Participants completed validated or adapted measures of coach leadership behavior, athlete engagement, sport confidence, and perceived team cohesion. Descriptive statistics, group comparisons, Pearson correlations, and structural equation modeling were performed using SPSS 27.0 and AMOS 26.0. Indirect effects were evaluated using bias-corrected bootstrapping with 5,000 resamples and 95% confidence intervals. Results Coach leadership behavior was positively correlated with athlete engagement ( r = 0.561, p < 0.001). Training and instruction, democratic leadership, positive feedback, and social support were positively associated with engagement, whereas autocratic leadership was negatively associated with engagement. In the structural model, the direct association between coach leadership behavior and athlete engagement remained positive ( β = 0.259, p = 0.010), alongside significant indirect associations through sport confidence (effect = 0.152, 95% CI [0.077, 0.232]) and perceived team cohesion (effect = 0.344, 95% CI [0.162, 0.559]). Although the latter estimate was numerically larger, the contrast did not reach statistical significance ( p = 0.051). Model fit was favorable for χ 2 / df (1.103), RMSEA (0.015), CFI (0.987), TLI (0.987), and SRMR (0.041), whereas GFI (0.863) and AGFI (0.854) were below 0.90. Because fit cutoffs are heuristic rather than absolute rejection criteria and several complementary indices were favorable, the model was retained for cautious interpretation rather than regarded as unequivocally well fitting. Conclusion Coach leadership behavior was associated with greater athlete engagement, with complementary indirect associations through sport confidence and perceived team cohesion, reflecting individual competence-related and athlete-perceived interpersonal pathways. Because the study was cross-sectional and based on self-report data, the indirect pathways should be interpreted as theoretically informed statistical associations rather than causal mechanisms.