Academic burnout among university students has become a growing concern, due to its high prevalence and negative effects on students' academic performance and overall well-being. Previous studies have revealed a complex association between perfectionism and burnout, as perfectionism could both contribute to and buffer against academic burnout. Given the inconsistent findings, the study aims to explore the underlying psychological mechanisms and cultural settings that influence the perfectionism-burnout link. Specifically, the present study collected 333 university students' responses and examined (1) the direct association between perfectionism and academic burnout, (2) the mediating role of harmonious and obsessive passion, and (3) the moderating effect of cultural contexts (i.e., traditional Chinese and Sino-foreign joint universities).
Mediation analysis indicated that perfectionism had a significant positive effect on burnout (β = 0.48, p < .001), but also an indirect negative effect through harmonious passion (β = -0.16, 95% CI [-0.25, -0.09]), accounting for 51.7% of the total effect. Similarly, obsessive passion partially mediated the relationship (indirect β = -0.04; total mediated effect = 13.7%), reflecting a suppression effect whereby both forms of passion attenuated the impact of perfectionism on burnout.
Moderated mediation analysis revealed that the indirect effect of perfectionism on academic burnout through obsessive passion was significantly moderated by cultural context: obsessive passion had a significant protective effect in Sino-foreign universities (effect = -0.06), but not in traditional Chinese universities (effect = 0.02).
These findings indicate a stable protective effect of harmonious passion across different cultural settings, while challenging the previous view that obsessive passion is consistently maladaptive. Instead, within autonomy-supportive environments such as Sino-foreign universities, obsessive passion may function as a motivational resource promoting persistence under academic pressures. These findings highlight the crucial role of cultural and educational context in shaping students' psychological outcomes.