The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into higher education has raised important questions regarding students’ acceptance of AI and the psychological and cognitive factors shaping their engagement with these systems. This study aimed to examine how university students’ AI self-efficacy influences their acceptance of AI, whether AI literacy helps explain this relationship, and whether greater AI acceptance is associated with lower AI anxiety. For the present study, data were obtained from 622 undergraduate students at a public university.
Empirical analyses were based on validated scales measuring AI self-efficacy, AI literacy, AI acceptance, and AI anxiety, and conducted using correlation analyses and regression-based mediation models via the PROCESS Macro. The results showed that AI self-efficacy was positively associated with AI acceptance, both directly and indirectly through AI literacy. Higher AI acceptance was also associated with lower AI anxiety; however, this relationship should not be interpreted as causal.
These findings support a sequential motivational, cognitive and affective model of AI engagement and highlight the importance of integrating confidence-building interventions with literacy-focused instructional strategies to promote psychologically adaptive and sustainable AI integration in higher education contexts. Faculty of Education, Sakarya University, Adapazarı, Turkey Onur İşbulan, Mehmet Uysal, Busra Caylan Ergene & Ozkan Ergene The authors declare no competing interests. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the Sakarya University Educational Research and Publication Ethics Committee (Reference No: E-61923333-050.99-314689, Decision No: 26/05, Date: December 13, 2023). In addition, informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to their involvement in the study. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Participants were informed about the study’s purpose and procedures via online form between 21.05.2025 and 06.06.2025. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material.
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