Why are students (not) motivated to change academic procrastination? An investigation based on the Transtheoretical Model of change

Grunschel, C., & Schopenhauer, L.

Abstract

In light of the drawbacks of academic procrastination, it is surprising that not all students want to decrease academic procrastination. To find out why students are motivated (or not) to change academic procrastination, we investigated the characteristics of 377 German students with different motivations to change based on the Transtheoretical Model of change. The students who did not contemplate changing their behavior were not negatively affected by academic procrastination, in contrast to those students who intended to reduce academic procrastination. The students who started to decrease academic procrastination presented themselves as optimistic. Based on our results, we suggest offering tailormade interventions to help students successfully overcome academic procrastination.