Mediators of the relationship between perceived social loafing and team performance among university student teams

Abstract: Perceived social loafing has been found to be negatively related to team performance. However, far too little attention has been paid to the underlying mechanism of this association. Thepurpose of the present study is to investigate not only the direct relationship between perceived social loafing and team performance but also the indirect relationship between these two variables viamediating roles of the sucker effect/social compensation and social loafer’s continuous social loafing. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 360 students of a public university in Vietnam in 2021. The current study confirmed the previous finding that perceived social loafing could negatively influence team performance. The most striking result to emerge from the data was that the sucker effect had no correlation with any other variables while social compensation and social loafer’s continuous social loafing were two serial mediators in the relationship between perceived social loafing and team performance. Specifically, when students perceived that their teammates engaged in social loafing,they exerted more effort to compensate for the social loafers, this way of reaction made the social loafers continue putting forth less effort and, in consequence, the overall team performance was low.