The Influence of School Loose-Tight Culture on Bullying of Middle School Students - The Mediating Role of Collective Moral Disengagement and Collective Efficacy

Oct 15, 2026

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A questionnaire study with 808 middle school students from three schools in Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan examines how school loose-tight culture relates to bullying and through which collective mechanisms. Measures include school loose-tight culture, collective moral disengagement, collective efficacy, and a student bullying scale. Results show that loose-tight culture significantly predicts bullying, relates negatively to moral disengagement and positively to collective efficacy, and that moral disengagement increases bullying while collective efficacy reduces bullying. Dual mediation indicates loose-tight culture restrains bullying via both mediators.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

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Abstract

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Keywords

Introduction

Tight-loose culture and school bullying

Collective moral disengagement

The Influence of School Loose-Tight Culture on Bullying of Middle School Students: The Mediating Role of Collective Moral Disengagement and Collective Efficacy Lei Wang, Yirui Song Wuhan Sports University, Wuhan 430079, Hubei, China | Abstract. To explore the relationship and mechanism of school loosetight culture to middle school bullying, a total of 808 students were selected from three middle schools in Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan Province of China, to conduct a questionnaire survey. The study used the school loose-tight culture scale, the collective moral disengagement scale, the collective efficacy scale, and the bullying scale for middle school students. The results showed that (i) school loose-tight culture significantly predicted the occurrence of school bullying; (ii) school loose-tight culture was significantly negatively correlated with collective moral disengagement and school bullying but positively correlated with collective efficacy. Further, collective moral disengagement was significantly positively correlated with school bullying, but collective efficacy was significantly negatively correlated with school bullying; (iii) school loose-tight culture inhibited school bullying through the dual mediating effects of collective moral disengagement and collective efficacy at the same time.
Best Evidence in Chinese Education 2021; 9(2):1263-1272.
Doi: [10.15354/bece.21.ar060](10.15354/bece.21.ar060). | | --- | | How to Cite: Wang, L., & Song, Y. (2021). The influence of school loose-tight culture on bullying of middle school students: The mediating role of collective moral disengagement and collective efficacy. Best Evidence in Chinese Education, 9(2):1263-1272. | Keywords: School Loose-Tight Culture, Collective Moral Disengagement, Collective Efficacy, Campus Bullying About the Author: Yirui Song, Department of Psychology, Wuhan Sports University, Wuhan 430079, Hubei, China. E-mail: [804504354@qq.com](804504354@qq.com) Correspondence to: Lei Wang, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Wuhan Sports University, Wuhan 430079, Hubei Province, China. E-mail: [378299706@qq.com](378299706@qq.com) Funding: This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund Project “Mental Generation Mechanism and Intervention Research on Campus Violence in Middle School Students”(project \#: 16BSH104). Conflict of Interests: None. © 2021 Insights Publisher. All rights reserved. Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed by the Insights Publisher. Question S CHOOL bullying is considered a widespread form of school violence, which has a long-term negative impact on young people’s healthy personalities and development (Hu, 2017) . Studies have shown that students with externalized behavior problems react negatively to the external environment (Cai, 2006) . First, according to the ternary interaction theory, an individual’s behavior is strongly governed by motivation and beliefs and adversely affects the subject’s thinking and emotions. Secondly, behavior is not only governed by individual needs but also restricted by the environment. Schools and classes are the environments that middle school students are exposed to most frequently, directly impacting their behavior. Studies have shown that bullying behaviors of middle school students are related to factors such as moral disengagement, self-efficacy, and class environment (Wang et al., 2018) . Still, there is no research on the influencing factors of campus bullying from the collective level. According to the ecological system theory, the development of middle school students is in a comple

FAQs

What relationship does school loose-tight culture have with middle school bullying?

School loose-tight culture significantly predicts the occurrence of school bullying.

How do collective moral disengagement and collective efficacy relate to bullying?

Collective moral disengagement shows a significant positive correlation with bullying, while collective efficacy shows a significant negative correlation with bullying.

How does school loose-tight culture influence bullying through mediators?

School loose-tight culture inhibits bullying through dual mediating effects of collective moral disengagement and collective efficacy at the same time.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Bulrr