This study investigated the relationship between university students' motivation and their academic performance, with effort acting as a mediating variable. The study strives to add to the body of knowledge on motivation, effort and academic performance, with specific reference to tertiary level institutions in the South African context. Motivation is separated into intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, which were used as the independent variables. Academic performance is the dependent variable, which was measured using the cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA). A quantitative relational design was employed to investigate the degree to which motivation predicts a students' academic performance. The data were collected through an online questionnaire from a convenience sample of 254 commerce faculty students within a university in the Western Cape, ranging from first year to fifth year of study. The empirical results obtained from the data, using the Pearson correlation coefficients, indicated significant relationships between intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and academic performance. Evidence was further found that students' intrinsic and extrinsic motivation influenced the amount of effort they exerted in trying to achieve their desired performance outcome. Through the use of Baron and Kenny's procedure to test mediation, effort was found to be a partial mediator of the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and academic performance. Furthermore, a multiple regression analysis of the data indicated that intrinsic motivation is the strongest predictor of academic performance, followed by effort. In the regression model extrinsic motivation could not explain unique variance in academic performance.
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