Motivation Is Not Created Equal: Unequal Motivational Payoffs as a Function of Country-Level Socioeconomic Development

• In Event: 63.027 - Understanding the Role of Culture and Context in Learning and Motivation Using Cross-National Data

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes
The goal of aim of this study was to examine how motivation payoffs (operationalized as how motivation drives optimal achievement) vary as a function of the societal socio-economic development.

Theoretical Framework
Motivation scholars have mostly examined motivation it as an individual phenomenon or at most as a product of the interaction between the individual and the mesosystem (e.g., family, classroom, school). In recent years, the socio-ecological approach has (re)emerged which encourages psychologists to explore how key psychological processes are influenced by ecological factors (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Oishi, 2014).

Drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological framework, we examine how a specific aspect of the macro-system, more specifically, the socio-economic development of the country where students are embedded in influence motivational processes. We focus specifically on how intrinsic motivation drives achievement and how this association may vary as a function of country-level socio-economic development.

Methods and Results
The current study used OECD PISA 2009 data produced by 500,870 adolescent students from 73 countries. Among these students, 51% girls (coded as 1) and 49% were boys (coded as 2). Their mean age was 15.78 (SD=.79). At the student level, we measured students’ intrinsic reading motivation and socio-economic status which was represented using the ESCS (economic social and culture status) index.

The Human Development Index (HDI) for each country was included as a country-level variable. HDI is an overall measure of societal development and includes achievement in three key domains: health, knowledge, and standard of living (Human Development Report, 2009). To examine the moderation of HDI on the relationship between individual motivation and achievement, we conducted two-level structural equation modeling with random slope. At the lower level, achievement was regressed on intrinsic motivation (with the coefficients constrained to be random). Achievement was also regressed on SES and sex to control for demographic effects. At the higher level, the intercept factor of achievement and the slope factor were both regressed on HDI. The results showed that at the lower level achievement was positively predicted by SES (b = 28.27, p < .001) and negatively predicted by gender in favor of girls (b = -23.15, p < .001). At the higher level, HDI positively predicted the slope factor (b = 5.91, p < .001) and the intercept factor (b = 46.34, p < .001).

In other words, students in more highly developed countries had higher levels of achievement. More interestingly, we found that students in more developed societies accrued more motivational dividends from their motivation compared to students in less developed societies. A student who is in a highly-developed economy will gain more from being motivated than an equally motivated student in a poor economy. This unequal motivational payoff is not just found in terms of absolute levels of achievement (which is not unsurprising) but also in terms of motivational payoffs.

Scholarly Significance
A full account of motivation need to focus not just on individual and meso-system factors but also broader macro-system factors such as a society’s economic structures. The study demonstrates the theoretical yields of the socio-ecological approach.

Authors

• Ronnel Bornasal King, The Education University of Hong Kong

• Yuyang Cai

• Hongfei Du, Guangzhou University