Is it externally stimulated or internally driven? A study on the influencing mechanisms of Chinese graduate students' intention to continue online learning

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly propelled the progression of online instruction in China. Existing studies have demonstrated that the quality of teachers' online teaching, as well as students' self-regulated learning (SRL), has a considerable impact on undergraduates' intention to persist with online learning. However, few studies have simultaneously considered these two aspects within a unified analytical framework, particularly regarding their influence on graduate students' intention to continue online learning. Therefore, this study aims to identify teachers' e-readiness and graduate students' SRL that enable students' online learning outcomes and, ultimately, their intention to continue online learning. Data were collected via a survey of 10,346 graduate students from 40 top universities in China, who had participated in online course learning. The results derived from the structural equation models and conditional process models indicated that teachers' e-readiness significantly influenced online learning outcomes, which in turn predicted students' intention to continue online learning. Additionally, it was discovered that self-regulated learning negatively moderated both the direct and indirect relationships between teachers' e-readiness and graduate students' intention to continue online learning. The constructed equations representing graduate students' intention to continue online learning suggested that relative to teachers' e-readiness, graduate students' SRL exerted a greater influence on their intention to continue online learning, with the two factors exhibiting substitution effects under specific circumstances.