Online communication and subjective well-being in Chinese college students: The mediating role of shyness and social self-efficacy

• A conformational mechanism model for online communication and subjective well-being is proposed.
• The mechanism operating by shyness and social self-efficacy.
• The influence of social self-efficacy varies between shy and no-shy participants.
• The mechanism is moderated by gender.

The present study attempts to examine the relationship between online communication and subjective well-being from the perspective of psychological need satisfaction, as well as the mediating role of shyness and social self-efficacy among Chinese college students. 574 college students with average age of 20 were asked to complete Psychological Need for Online Communication Scale, Shyness Scale, Social Self-efficacy Scale and Subjective Well-being Scale. SEM evidence supports the stimulation hypothesis, namely, the psychological needs satisfied by online communication can promote a person’s social self-efficacy and experience a higher evaluation of subjective well-being. Meanwhile, the psychological needs satisfied by online communication can also influence individuals’ status of shyness, which will decrease their social self-efficacy and lead to a lower subjective well-being. Furthermore, Chinese female college students obtain less social self-efficacy from the satisfaction of psychological needs through online communication than their male counterparts did, and resulted in less subjective well-being. The results are discussed in terms of psychological needs theory.