This dissertation examines how authoritarian and democratic coaching styles shape athlete satisfaction in Chinese university basketball, with intrinsic motivation specified as a mediating mechanism and gender and league level specified as moderators. The study addresses limited cross-cultural evidence on coaching leadership and the lack of mechanism testing in collegiate sport systems in China. A stratified cluster sample will be drawn from Liaoning Province teams competing in the Chinese University Basketball Association League across first, second, and third tiers. The sample will include 62 men’s and women’s teams and 744 rostered athletes. Validated instruments will be used to assess coaching style, intrinsic motivation, and athlete satisfaction following translation, back translation, and pilot procedures. Measurement quality will be established through internal consistency, composite reliability, average variance extracted, and confirmatory factor analyses. Measurement invariance will be tested across gender and league level to enable meaningful subgroup comparisons. The structural model will be estimated with partial least squares structural equation modeling. Indirect effects will be evaluated with bias corrected bootstrapping, and multi group comparisons will probe moderation by gender and competitive tier. Analyses will control for training load, playing time, and years of participation. Robustness checks will include alternative model specifications, tests for common method variance, and sensitivity analyses for missing data and non normality. Ethical approval, informed consent, and data protection procedures will be implemented in accordance with institutional guidelines. It is expected that democratic coaching will show a positive direct association with athlete satisfaction and an additional indirect association via intrinsic motivation. Authoritarian coaching is expected to display context contingent effects that depend on relational climate and competitive demands. Intrinsic motivation is expected to function as a significant mediator linking leadership to satisfaction. Gender and league level are expected to moderate the direct coaching style to satisfaction pathway, indicating that the magnitude of leadership effects varies across athlete subgroups and competitive contexts. The study contributes theoretically by integrating self determination theory, the multidimensional model of leadership, and the athlete satisfaction model within a single cross cultural framework. It contributes methodologically by providing evidence on measurement invariance and by applying a moderated mediation design to collegiate basketball in China. Practically, the findings will inform coach education and program management by specifying when clear structure and when autonomy supportive practices are most likely to enhance athlete satisfaction, retention, and season long performance.

Coaching Styles, Athletes Satisfaction, Intrinsic Motivation