Investigating American and Chinese college students' reading motivation: a cross-cultural study

While there is a large body of studies on reading motivation conducted in Western countries, little research compared college students' reading motivation between Western and Eastern Asian countries. It is unclear whether previous findings can be expanded from Western contexts to Eastern Asian contexts. This quantitative study explored the country and gender differences in reading motivation among 228 American (114 males and 114 females) and 228 Chinese (114 males and 114 females) college students. Our results showed that Chinese college students showed higher scores in two dimensions of reading motivation (reading as part of self and reading for recognition) than American students. We also found that there were similar scores in two other dimensions (reading efficacy and reading to do well in other realms), suggesting cross-cultural differences and similarities in reading motivation. Additionally, we found that male students exhibited higher scores than female students for reading efficacy while other dimensions remained invariant. This pioneer study highlights the important effects of country and gender on reading motivation.