The current study intended to examine whether the relationship between university students' striving to avoid inferiority (SAI) and procrastination was serially mediated by stress and self-control. The sample consisted of 154 Hong Kong university students. Their levels of striving to avoid inferiority, stress, self-control, and procrastination were measured by the Striving to Avoid Inferiority Scale (SAIS), the stress subscale of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21), the Short Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SSRQ), and the General Procrastination Scale (GPS), respectively. The results of structural equation modeling revealed that SAI positively predicted stress, stress negatively predicted self-control, and self-control negatively predicted procrastination. SAI did not directly predict procrastination. The results of bootstrapping analyses supported the hypotheses that the effect of stress on procrastination was mediated by self-control, the effect of SAI on self-control was mediated by stress, and more importantly, the effect of SAI on procrastination was serially mediated by stress and self-control. Further research is suggested to investigate the thoughts and feelings pertinent to procrastination and the actual duration of procrastination among university students.
Keywords: performance-avoidance goal orientation; procrastination; self-control; stress; striving to avoid inferiority.