The Relationship between Motivation and Burnout in Athletes and the Mediating Role of Engagement

Mar Graña, Cristina De Francisco and Constantino Arce
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Mar Graña: Department of Social Psychology, Basic and Methodology, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Cristina De Francisco: Department of Social Psychology, University of Sevilla, 41018 Sevilla, Spain
Constantino Arce: Department of Social Psychology, Basic and Methodology, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 9, 1-10

Abstract: The purpose of our research was to analyze the relationship among motivation, burnout, and engagement in sports. Five hundred athletes of both sexes from multiple sports modalities took part, with a mean age of 17.39 years (SD = 4.60). The instruments applied were as follows: Spanish versions of the Sport Motivation Scale (SMS), the Athlete Engagement Questionnaire (AEQ) and the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ). Pearson correlations showed that motivation is negatively related to burnout and positively to engagement, while burnout and engagement are inversely related to each other. Through structural equation modeling, it was shown that engagement has a mediating role between motivation and burnout. Furthermore, there are no gender differences in this relationship, although there are differences between athletes who practice individual sports and those who practice collective sports. Encouraging high levels of self-determined motivation can help to increase athletes’ degree of engagement and protect them against burnout and sport withdrawal.

Keywords: motivation; burnout; engagement; athletes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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