The influence of motivation climate on university student engagement in distance education during the pandemic: Moderating role of self‐regulation.

To investigate the influence of motivation climate and self‐regulation on university student engagement in distance education (DE) during the pandemic, a total of 436 Chinese university students were invited to participate in the online survey (including demographic variables, Chinese version of engagement scale, the perceived motivational climate scale, and the self‐regulated learning abilities scale) in the Spring semester, 2020. Bicorrelation and regression analysis were used to explore the relationship among studied variables. Results showed that mastery motivation climate had a positive relation with student engagement, while performance motivation climate had a negative relation with it. Self‐regulation could strengthen the positive relationship between mastery motivation climate and student engagement. However, the moderating role of self‐regulation was not found in the relationship between performance motivation climate and student engagement. These findings could enrich our understanding about the motivation climate–student engagement relationship from self‐regulation perspective and have implications for DE during the pandemic. Practitioner points: Mastery motivation climate (MMC) positively predicts student engagement in distance education (DE).Performance motivation climate negatively predicts student engagement in DE.Self‐regulation could strengthen the impact of MMC on student engagement in DE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]