Correlates of diet quality among sedentary white-collar workers in Türkiye: associations with physical activity and lifestyle-related factors.

University athletes in China increasingly face substantial pressures as they simultaneously fulfill the roles of students and competitive performers. Intensive training schedules, academic responsibilities, and competitive expectations often place athletes under sustained psychological strain []. Prolonged exposure to such demands may lead to athlete burnout, typically characterized by emotional and physical exhaustion, a diminished sense of sport value, and reduced feelings of accomplishment [, ]. Athlete burnout not only impairs sport performance but may also negatively affect athletes’ psychological well‑being and academic persistence. Consequently, understanding the psychological mechanisms that contribute to athlete burnout has become an important issue in sport psychology and athlete development research. Among the contextual factors shaping athletes’ experiences, coaching leadership behaviors are particularly influential. Within university sport systems, coaches not only organize training and competition but also shape the motivational climate and emotional environment experienced by athletes. Leadership styles emphasizing strict control may enhance discipline but can simultaneously suppress athletes’ autonomy and interpersonal connectedness, thereby increasing burnout risk []. In contrast, autonomy‑supportive leadership behaviors-such as encouraging participation in decision‑making and providing emotional understanding-have been shown to enhance motivation quality and psychological well‑being []. However, despite growing recognition of the importance of coaching leadership, the psychological mechanisms through which leadership behaviors influence athlete burnout remain insufficiently clarified. Self‑Determination Theory (SDT) provides an important theoretical framework for understanding how social environments influence individuals’ motivation and psychological functioning []. According to SDT, optimal psychological development depends on the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When these needs are fulfilled, individuals are more likely to experience intrinsic motivation, psychological resilience, and emotional well‑being; when these needs are frustrated, individuals are more vulnerable to stress, disengagement, and burnout [, ]. Within sport contexts, supportive coaching leadership can facilitate need satisfaction by promoting autonomy support, competence development, and positive interpersonal relationships. These leadership behaviors may therefore foster internal psychological resources that help athletes adapt to stress and maintain psychological stability. In particular, psychological resilience reflects an individual’s capacity to adapt to adversity and sustain psychological functioning under pressure, whereas emotion regulation refers to the strategies individuals use to manage emotional responses in challenging situations. From a psychological resource perspective, resilience may serve as a foundational capacity that enables athletes to employ more adaptive emotion regulation strategies when facing training stress and competitive pressure. Despite the relevance of these processes, previous research has often examined psychological resilience and emotion regulation independently when explaining athletes’ psychological adjustment. As a result, limited attention has been given to how these mechanisms may operate together in linking coaching leadership to athlete burnout. Building on SDT and resource‑based perspectives, the present study proposes a sequential psychological mechanism in which coaching leadership behaviors influence athlete burnout through the progressive pathway of psychological resilience and emotion regulation. Specifically, supportive leadership behaviors may strengthen athletes’ psychological resilience by satisfying their basic psychological needs and promoting adaptive cognitive appraisals of stress. Enhanced resilience may subsequently facilitate more effective emotion regulation strategies, which ultimately reduce emotional exhaustion and burnout. By integrating leadership behavior, psychological resources, and emotional coping processes into a unified analytical framework, this study aims to clarify the psychological mechanisms underlying athlete burnout among Chinese university athletes and provide theoretical and practical implications for coaching leadership and athlete psychological support.