Abstract

Subjective well-being is a crucial indicator of higher vocational college students’ mental health, while materialistic values may be associated with poorer well-being. This study examined the mechanisms through which materialism is related to subjective well-being among Chinese higher vocational college students, with subjective well-being operationalized using life satisfaction and depressive symptoms, focusing on the mediating role of basic psychological need satisfaction (BPNS) and the moderating role of self-compassion. The final analytic sample included 4012 higher vocational college students from southwestern China (Mage = 18.79 years, SD = 0.96, 37.1% male), and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling with robust maximum likelihood estimation and latent moderated structural equations. Results indicated that materialism was associated with lower life satisfaction and higher depressive symptoms. BPNS partially mediated the associations between materialism and both outcomes. Self-compassion moderated the associations between BPNS and both life satisfaction and depressive symptoms, but the moderated mediation effect was significant only for depressive symptoms. Specifically, self-compassion weakened the indirect association between materialism and depressive symptoms through BPNS. These findings contribute to SDT-based research by integrating vulnerability and resilience perspectives and suggest that self-compassion may be particularly relevant to lower depressive symptoms associated with lower BPNS among higher vocational college students.

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