Introduction

Formalistic tasks are common in collective societies. In traditional understandings formalistic tasks were usually considered as tasks set by superior leaders and pushed to the subordinates in a compulsory way, little linked with the subordinates’ business post and performance. In the perception of subordinates, formalistic tasks were characterized by meaninglessness, low-value, and disinterest, for superficial and face-saving targets. For example, Chinese employees are often required to take part in team building or political learning activities that are against their will and lack direct perceived value. They are required to save formalistic traces of their work, even though the traces will not have a positive effect in the future. In addition, organizational leaders are accustomed to carrying out their work through calling meetings rather than taking action. Similar phenomena exist in Chinese colleges. For example, students are asked to attend lectures that they are not interested in and that have little to do with their major, just to impress academic superstars.

Formalistic tasks are more likely to be fostered in eastern cultures (e.g. China) which emphasize collective interests, face-saving, and official rank standards. The trigger of formalistic tasks is more diverse at the micro level. Their occurrence is probably rooted in the need for organizational culture construction, a reflection of bureaucratic leadership style, or the following of organizational routines. They may bring some problems such as increasing communication costs, reducing organizational flexibility, and inhibiting individual creativity (Peng and Zhao, 2019; Dai, 2018; Deng and Gong, 2021).

Different from the negative phenomenon-based view, our study attempts to recognize and explore the potential value of formalistic tasks in certain fields, such as establishing organizational order, enhancing employee compliance, and keeping work on track (Barkema et al., 2015; Wang, 2022). We proposed that it is necessary to enhance the management of them for improving organizational vitality and production efficiency. When business tasks are closely related to organizational and individual performance, the value of formalistic tasks is more reflected in the level of organization and leadership. Formalistic tasks produce indirect or long-term effects on the subordinates, so the value is more difficult to be perceived. It then discourages the enthusiasm of subordinates to accept and participate in formalistic tasks, and in turn damages organizational expected performance.

Considering the pros and cons, we need to develop a theory of formalistic management for enhancing the value and curbing the flaws. The theory should be demand-side or based on the interaction of the supply and demand of formalistic tasks. The improvement of individual perception therefore becomes the key to solving the problem. For example, individuals more easily accept and effectively complete formalistic tasks when they understand the causal relationship between the tasks and organizational performance through their leaders’ explanation, or when the tasks are integrated into their post activities and help improving job performance. Hence, our study aims to explore an individual’s perception mechanism to guide the management of the participation and completion of formalistic tasks. In the study, individual perceptions were focused on the concerns of PV, PC, and PP. Among them, PV and PC are individual’s perceptions of the benefits and costs of formalistic tasks from a rational perspective, and PP is an individual’s perception of others’ attitudes to the tasks from social and emotional perspectives. The three would affect an individual’s recognition, decision, and behavior in the process of executing the tasks.

Our study focused on the answer to two research questions. First, how do individuals perceive and recognize the formalistic tasks in their organizations. Second, how do their perceptions affect their participation in and completion of the tasks? We therefore developed two sub-studies. Study 1 carried out a statistical analysis of individual perceptions in terms of the characteristics, value, costs, and pressure of formalistic tasks. Study 2 developed a model to measure the effects of PV, PC, and PP on the completion of formalistic tasks. Hence, the remainder of our study were organized as follows. We proposed the basic theory and reviewed the literature in the section “Theory and literature review”. In the section “Methodology”, the methodology of the two studies was displayed. Following that, their results were summarized in the section “Results”. Finally, we discussed the conclusions, implications, limitations, and future research in the section “Conclusions”.

Theory and literature review

COR theory

COR theory initially emerged as a stress theory, believing that the threat of potential and actual resource loss will lead to individual tension and stress (Hobfoll et al., 2018). It further points out that under pressure, individuals tend to use existing resources to obtain new resources, so as to reduce the net loss of resources. They would strive to maintain and protect their cherished resources when they are unable to evaluate the marginal benefits of new resources and the threat of resource loss (Hobfoll et al., 2018). In our study, the theory was introduced to explain the psychological mechanism of individuals to perceive the value, costs, and pressure of formalistic tasks.

According to Halbesleben et al. (2014), since resources are the important “things that individuals perceive to help them achieve their goals”, individuals would be motivated by their perceptions of the increasing and loss of resources when they make decisions on the behaviors requiring resource inputs. Because of the characteristics of formalistic tasks, such as lip-deep, bureaucratic, and ambiguous in cause and effect, individuals easily magnify the perceived costs and risks of resource investment and underestimate the perceived value. Hence, COR theory could well explain why individuals tend to reject tasks or complete them at a low level under pressure. Under the theory, we would like to develop a new framework of the relationship between individual perceptions and the completion of formalistic tasks, for better-predicting individuals’ decisions and behaviors in responding to the tasks assigned by their leaders.

Individual perceptions

In economic decisions, an individual always weighs their efforts against the rewards. Both of them are composed of economic, material, and social elements. Economic rewards reflect as PV before individuals get involved in a certain activity. Material efforts reflect as PCs, such as time, energies, and tools. Social elements include social rewards such as esteem and communication, and social efforts through which individuals could reduce their pressure in collective activities (Antoci et al., 2012; Mamuneas et al., 2006). Hence, we introduced the capital theory to lead the development of our framework and analyzed the individual perceptions from three aspects, i.e. PV, PC, and PP.

PV is a kind of assessment of the benefits incurring in a behavior (Boksberger and Melsen, 2011), e.g. obtaining and using a product or deciding to do a task. It is a multidimensional construct including monetary and non-monetary components (Chahal and Kumari, 2012). The latter is composed of functional and epistemic values (Peña et al., 2012). In terms of completing a task, functional values derive from the achievement of the task (Petrick, 2002; Sweeney and Soutar, 2001) and epistemic values refer to the acquisition of knowledge in the process of task completion (Duman and Mattila,2005).

PC is a physical and emotional connection between employees and the organization (Halbesleben and Wheeler, 2015). In the completion of a job task, the need for resource inputs plays a vital role (Bakker and Demerouti, 2009; Demerouti et al., 2001). PC is defined as the physical and organizational aspects of the task that require employees’ sustained physical and psychological efforts and are therefore associated with physiological and psychological costs (Perez et al., 2019).

According to the “resource caravans and resource caravan passageways” principle of COR, resources exist in environments, and environmental factors, for example, the language and behavior of superiors or peers, therefore have an important impact on the resource acquisition and culture shaping in organizations (Hobfoll, 2012). When individuals engage in and complete organizational tasks well, they would gain social approval and self-image improvement. However, they would also gain PPs, including coercive, mimetic, or normative demands from their superiors and people around them (Wang et al., 2018). Individuals would then engage in similar practices that are required to do so, imitate one another, or simply do the appropriate things.

Based on the expectancy valence theory, individuals’ behaviors are affected by their self-perceptions and external environments (Chung and Kim, 2022). In detail, PV could determine an individual’s intention, decision, and behavior. The failure to change behaviors arises when the changed behaviors have long-term rather than short-term economic benefits. Individuals are less motivated to engage in a task when they perceive that they need to invest more resources (Perez et al., 2019). For instance, in an experiment on operating robotic units, participants’ perceived performance decreased with a larger communication delay, while their reported frustration, effort, and mental demands significantly increased (Kim et al., 2022). In the scenario of performing an air-to-surface task, Li et al. (2018) found that extra workload has a negative effect on pilots’ situational awareness performance and increases the probability of operating hazards. They therefore proposed to develop opportunities to compensate for the negative effect of workload through human-centered organizational optimization (Li et al., 2018). Furthermore, as proposed by Wang et al. (2018), the pressure an individual perceived from institutions profoundly impacted his/her behaviors in the organization.

The completion of formalistic tasks

Formalistic task has the characteristics such as compulsivity, superficiality, and bureaucracy that are different from other tasks. To organizations and individuals, it may be valuable in potential in certain contexts, but it may also cause many problems in organization and motivation. It is a kind of degenerate thing mixed with benign administrative affairs. For one thing, value-neutral formalistic tasks take normalized and standardized forms to organize rational administrative works. For another, derogatory formalistic tasks are carried out with repetitive, inefficient, and superficial work styles (Liu, 2021). They are often reflected in many forms in management works, covering up and even deviating from leaders’ original purposes.

The fact that organization members are not willing to accept formalistic tasks is attributed more to the ineffective and inefficient forms than the tasks’ quantity and frequency (Jiang, 2019). In the context of national governance, the defects of formalistic tasks have a negative impact on a nation’s comprehensive and sustainable development. The effects cover damaging political ecology, reducing governance efficiency, cutting public satisfaction, etc. (Liu, 2021; Tuo, 2013). It is necessary to improve the management of formalistic tasks to clear the atmosphere and increase work efficiency.

From a top-down perspective, the generation of formalist tasks is motivated by factors, such as authoritarian leadership style, assessment-driven pressure system, and instrumental rational behavior (Peng and Zhao, 2019). From the bottom-up perspective, the participation willingness and completion of formalistic tasks are influenced by factors including individuals’ rational evaluation of the value and significance, the correlation between the tasks and job duties, and the imbalance between the needed efforts and the expected rewards (Omansky et al., 2016). In terms of the formalistic tasks for constructing organizational culture which are difficult to predict the quantitative performance, Song (2013) proposed that the lack of subjective evaluation of the tasks’ value and the inconformity between individual’s expectation and the reality lead to an individual’s apathetic attitude, negative support, and low work efficiency. Furthermore, Ren (2018) highlighted the important role of activating an individual’s willingness to support top-down formalistic tasks in the realization of participatory governance. Consequently, the management of formalistic tasks could be improved through the optimization of top-bottom organization and the motivation of individual enthusiasm and organizational vitality from the bottom-top perspective.

The management of formalistic tasks

Few scholars have focused on the management of formalistic tasks, though some relative constructs have been proposed. A similar concept is an illegitimate task, which was defined as the employees are required to perform roles beyond their expectations (Semmer et al., 2015). It reflects as unreasonable and unnecessary work. However, formalistic tasks usually have some other characters such as normative, involuntary, lip-deep, and bureaucratic, and ambiguous in cause and effect (Fang, 2019). It is therefore a new construct with academic significance.

Similar to formalistic management, relative proposals include symbolic management, performative governance, bureaucratic management, etc. Scholars in the field of symbolic management hold that leaders could establish organizational order, institution, and culture through some formal and symbolic actions (Sun, 2020). Symbolic management may bring enterprises into a bad situation where their leaders excessively pursue the satisfaction of governments and the public by ostensibly acting in line with external expectations, but lacking substantial contributions. Performative governance is a thought at the national level similar to symbolic management. It was defined as the theatrical deployment of language, symbols, and gestures to foster an impression of good governance among citizens (Ding, 2020). Both symbolic management and performative management can partly predict the generation of formalistic tasks, but their connotation and emphases are quite different from formalistic task management. Bureaucratic management highlights the importance of control and obedience culture (Barkema et al., 2015). It is a typical leadership style from top to bottom. Formalistic tasks usually show bureaucratic style in the process of promotion, but not all bureaucratic styles are related to formalistic tasks.

Considering to fill the gap in theory, we would make two differences, unlike the previous proposals. First, we tried to reduce the criticism of bad management style but emphasized the positive value of formalistic tasks and developed solutions to improve the degree of task completion through enhancing employees’ cognition. Second, we are concerned with the relationship between individuals and environments as well as the interaction between individuals and the tasks, and so we aimed to propose a bottom-up theory to lead the management of formalistic tasks, unlike the fact that some studies focused on the discovery of the problems in the management dominated by forceful and hypocritical superiors.

Methodology

Our research included two quantitative studies. Study 1 was a statistical analysis. It aimed to answer three basic questions. First, what is a formalistic task, and what are its characteristics? Second, how do individuals perceive its value and costs, and in turn how do they support it? Third, how are individuals motivated by others to complete the task? We then proposed three hypotheses about the relationships between individual perceptions (including PV, PC, and PP) and the completion of formalistic tasks, and developed a SEM model to test the hypotheses in Study 2.

We selected Chinese college students as samples for the following considerations. First, the formalistic task is a common phenomenon in the Chinese context, with a typical collective culture. It is more serious in administrative and public institutions such as colleges than in private organizations. Second, it is observed that many kinds of formalistic tasks do exist in the authors’ working universities and surroundings. The authors have a better understanding of the operation of college organization and therefore could make more in-depth investigations about formalistic tasks. Third, for convenient sampling, we targeted the students in the working university of the authors as samples in Study 1. Furthermore, for increasing the generality of our findings, we expanded the scope of sampling in Study 2 to the students of other universities in China.

The methodology of Study 1

Investigation development

In order to execute Study 1, We developed an exploratory investigation of student respondents in Nanchang University through a questionnaire survey. The university is the largest comprehensive university with the best brand in Jiangxi Province, China. It has a complete range of disciplines including science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, and humanities and social sciences. More than 50,000 students were enrolled each year.

The questionnaire was comprised of three sections. The first one aimed to examine the demographic information of the respondents, including their gender, grade, major, and politics status. The second one was to inquire about their general feelings and status when they were suffering formalistic tasks. Finally, through the development of five-point Likert scale, the last one aimed to measure their perceptions and the degree of supporting and completing the tasks in three specific contexts with formalistic characteristics: (a) a normative and probably uninteresting lecture, (b) a seeming inspection activity lacking actual effect in the situation of COVID-19, and (c) a compulsory but probably boring group activity. The selected contexts and the self-developed questionnaire items were repeatedly discussed by the research team members and confirmed by two professors in the fields of sociology and management. In addition, we developed two open items to make deep explorations. We judged the carefulness of the respondents on the basis of the filling of the open items.

Samples

The data of Study 1 was collected by questionnaires responded to by the students recruited from Nanchang University. Three hundred and nineteen students volunteered to fill in the questionnaire offline. Before the formal survey, we first randomly sent out 39 questionnaires as a pre-survey on 15 March 2021, which confirmed the validity and comprehensibility of the questionnaire items. From 23 May to 28 June 2021, we called in respondents who voluntarily answered the questionnaire through face-to-face inquiries. After removing invalid questionnaires, for example, the incomplete ones, 295 valid questionnaires were finally collected through the formal survey. The effective recovery rate was 92.48%.

The demographic characteristics of the respondents were as follows. In terms of gender, 156 (52.9%) male and 139 (47.1%) female participated in our survey. For major, 57.2% of the respondents were from humanities and social sciences, 39% from science and technology majors, and 3% were from others. Among them, undergraduate, master, and doctoral students accounted for 56.9%, 40.3%, and 2.7% respectively. In addition, 27.5% of the respondents was a member of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and others were not. Student cadres were the majority, accounting for 51.5%.

Data analysis techniques

We used statistical methods to complete the data analysis of Study 1. The results were presented by statistical charts and contingency tables. Since the study is an exploratory analysis, it is not suitable for using traditional methods to test the reliability and validity of the data. However, we still checked the internal logical consistency between the data of different items in each questionnaire through manual observation, so as to roughly determine the reliability of our data.

The methodology of Study 2

Hypotheses

As expectancy-value theory proposed, the decisions on whether an individual chooses a task and how much the individual engages in the task are determined by the comparison of his/her expectancy for success and task PV (Chung and Kim, 2022). Individuals tend to excel in the field where they are confident of success and choose the tasks that are interesting, personally useful, and important (Perez et al., 2019). However, formalistic tasks are often resisted since they are boring, useless to business development, and unimportant to personal achievement (Yu, 2008; Ren, 2018). Individuals are often difficult to perceive the value of formalistic tasks since it is generally implicit or collectivist-oriented. Therefore, it becomes particularly important to enhance individual’s value perception of formalistic tasks. The promotion of PV can stimulate individual intention to participate in formalistic tasks and in turn, increase the results achieved by completing them.

For example, in the task of “building a civilized city” in Liangjiang City, China narrated by Ren (2018), the problem of indifference and resistance to the formalistic task occurred because of the weak PV of citizens. In order to improve the living environment of urban residents, the city government launched a top-down mobilization of civilization creation, calling on more citizens to participate in community service and governance. However, there was a conflict between the single government policy and citizens’ diverse demands for environmental improvement. As a result, they lacked awareness of the overall task and rational thinking about the value of participation, therefore the gap between their expectations and the reality happened. Finally, citizens passively participated in the task with a cold attitude and a lack of initiative. Consequently, we proposed the following hypothesis.

H1: Individuals’ PV has a positive effect on the completion of formalistic tasks.

Guided by expectancy-value theory, individuals’ self-efficacy is a function of the relation between PC and the outcomes. Kim et al. (2022) substantiated that PC was negatively related to different components of engagement and achievement. The effect was generated through two mechanisms. First, PC is related to perceived difficulty (Toma, 2022). When individuals predict a greater demand for resource inputs in a task, they increase their expectations of the task’s difficulty accordingly. Task difficulty and the expected probability of success stimulate individuals’ investments and effectiveness in task completion. According to achievement motivation theory, moderate perceived difficulty can make individuals reach the highest degree of task participation and completion (Capa et al., 2008). Second, PC is also related to perceived risk (Cheng and Lee, 2011). According to COR theory, individuals would be sensitive to the potential loss of resources when they make choices of task investment. When individuals perceive a loss of resources, they are more likely to have stress responses, such as job burnout and depression (Halbesleben, 2006). Formalist tasks with the style of authoritarian leadership are usually collective interest-oriented and coercive, resulting in the perceptions of temporary loss of and threat to individual resources. The perceptions lead to the amplified perceived difficulty of completing the task and the perceived risk of resource loss, so individuals show the emotions of low support and negative response.

According to the investigation reported by Deng and Gong (2021), there was a typical formalistic phenomenon in the supervision and assessment system of the market supervision bureau of a Chinese city. The criteria of the assessment from superiors is work trace rather than actual results, which gives birth to the routine of trace management. Under the pressure of frequent formalized assessment, subordinates spend a lot of time writing reports and making written materials in order to complete the tasks assigned by their superiors but lack the motivation to really implement the tasks and serve the public. After job burnout, the subordinates even choose to complete only a part of the tasks. We therefore proposed the following hypothesis.

H2: Individuals’ PC has a negative effect on the completion of formalistic tasks.

According to stress theory, for the common interests of survival or the completion of common tasks, organizations would promote their members to adopt common attitudes and actions accepted by leaders or the majority through the influence of institutions, leaders, or co-workers (Szalma and Teo, 2012). When the requirements from institutions and leaders or the influence from co-workers are inconsistent with individuals’ intentions, individuals feel tensive and depressed, resulting in CP and NP (Liu et al., 2010). The former is derived from coercive homogeneity driven by organizational system or leader power, and the latter arises from social norms, morals, and the fear of deviating from group opinions. The root of formalistic tasks is to unduly pursue the routine, standardization, and normalization of the tasks. Excessive demands on them by superiors lead to passive acceptance rather than psychological approval by the subordinates (Johnson et al., 2016). The actions of the subordinates choosing silence, passive acceptance, and even resistance would form a herd effect. When their co-workers choose passive acceptance, they would also choose similar actions to avoid to bear the pressure alone. Otherwise, they would choose to rebel with their co-workers to achieve their own intentions. In the case proposed by Yan and Zhang (2021), villagers with economic rationality were indifferent to the rural public affairs promoted by governments, and they responded negatively even when they were required by the proprietors. Influenced by most villagers’ apathy, few villagers took the way of supervision to express their dissatisfaction with formalistic tasks, but they blended in and became the silent majority.

PC generates pressure for individuals in completing formalistic tasks, but the pressure is a psychological perception related to social processes. According to social comparison theory, individuals achieve the self-adjustment of pressure through social comparison (Kwon et al., 2022). When individuals make a positive decision, they expect emotional support from superiors, co-workers, friends, and family. Otherwise, when they make a negative strategy for a formalistic task, they hope that surrounding persons make the same choice, so as to confirm their judgment, improve the credibility of the evaluation, or at least reduce the relative risk of resource loss caused by possible decision-making errors. Therefore, to accept the pressure from and keep pace with their superiors or co-workers could ease individuals’ conflict between the perception of cost loss and the completion demand of formalistic tasks, making them more likely to accept the tasks. We therefore propose the following hypothesis.

H3: Individuals’ PPs (a. CP, and b. NP) weaken the negative effect of PC on the completion of formalistic tasks.

The above hypotheses are suitable for measurement in the Chinese context. First, the long-term Confucian culture in China has made collectivism and official rank standards deeply popular among the people, so formalistic tasks are quite common in Chinese organizations. Second, with the rapid development of China’s economy in recent years, Chinese people have a stronger sense of competition, and they are more sensitive to the possession and preservation of resources. Therefore, COR theory is suitable to interpret their psychological motivations. Finally, the “guanxi” culture of Chinese people makes them hover between rejection and acceptance when confronted with formalistic tasks. The complex psychological mechanism is worth measuring.

The above hypotheses based on the evidence of diverse social groups are well adapted to the colleges. First, the perception of adult individuals is internally stable in a certain period. The perception of formalistic tasks of college students and social individuals are all affected by the same collective culture, so there should be little difference. Second, compared with the decision-making whether firm employees identify with and participate in formalistic tasks, which may be affected by more diverse environmental factors, the influencing factors of college students’ decision-making are more endogenous. Hence, college student samples may be more suitable for our theoretical hypotheses. Third, college students are a group with self-pursuit and free minds, and their perception and response to formalistic tasks should be more sensitive and real. In addition, existing literature has shown that there is no significant difference between the perceptual variable data of Chinese firm employees and college students (Guo et al., 2019).

Measures

We developed two scenarios, high formalism and low formalism, for measuring the variables in the completion of formalistic tasks. Their features are described as follows. First, high formalism. Each respondent was supposed as a student majoring in mathematics. He/she was required to listen to an academic lecture on improving moral standards. The lecture might be boring and not relevant to professional development, but mandatory. Second, low formalism. The respondent majoring in mathematics was required to listen to an academic lecture on the frontiers of mathematics. Though the lecture might be valuable, the respondent was not willing to participate in the activity because of the inappropriate time. All respondents were invited to answer the questionnaire items in one of the two scenarios that were randomly assigned. The items are exactly the same in both scenarios.

We used three techniques to control the accuracy with which two scenarios were identified. First, we gave ample cues according to the typical characteristics of formalistic tasks such as meaninglessness, irrelevance, and coerciveness in the scenario of a high formalism task. The cues act as stimuli for forming perceptive and behavioral decisions on the participation in and completion of the tasks. In contrast, these cues did not appear in the scenario of the low formalism task. Second, we have already completed the data collection and analysis of Study 1 when designing the measures of Study 2. Therefore, we made the experimental design of Study 2 by integrating the knowledge gained from Study 1. Moreover, the effective identification of two scenarios was conducted by a pre-survey among students in a master’s class. The students were able to detect the cues and evaluate the differences between the cues in two scenarios. The perceived differences are basically consistent with the results of our Study 1. Third, we evaluated the sample data collected in two scenarios and found that the two data were significantly different in core variables such as PV and PC. This proves the effectiveness of our control. In addition, the reason why we defined the second scenario as a low formalism task is because it does have some weak characteristics of a formalistic task, such as the top-down form of task layout, the soft constraint of voluntary check-in, and the inappropriate time causing respondents to consider involuntary participation in the activity.

Our study involved the measurements of four variables: the PV, PC, PP, and CD of formalistic tasks. In our research framework, PV and PC are independent variables, PP is a moderating variable, and CD represents the dependent variable. We adapted the items from mature scales and integrated them into a questionnaire for measuring these latent variables. The items were measured by 5-point Likert scale, where 1 denoted strongly disagree, and 5 denoted strongly agree. The items for measuring PV were adapted from Lee et al. (2014), including four items such as “the lecture is very helpful to my learning in the major”. The items for measuring PC were adapted from Perez et al. (2019), including four items such as “it’s a waste of time to attend the lecture”. The measures of PP included CP and NP. For measuring CP, three items including “college leaders will want more students to attend the activity” were developed on the basis of Mezias (1990) and Lee et al., (2009). Four items such as “my roommates will actively participate in the lecture” were adapted from Lobo and Greenland (2017) to measure NP. Finally, inspired by Ju (2020) and Luo et al. (2020), we developed seven items such as “I will attend the lecture on time and listen to it carefully till the end” to measure CD. Since the CD of formalistic tasks is usually not directly related to individual performance, it is difficult for us to directly describe and observe the completion effects. In the study, we measured the CD of formalistic tasks through the external form and degree of individual participation in the tasks, which is in line with the nature of formalistic tasks of which the performance is surface. In detail, we used some adverbs, for example, “carefully” and “actively”, to measure an individual’s level of participation and completion. In fact, in the current Chinese assessment system, timely and serious participation in formalistic tasks is usually considered to be a good completion of the tasks. In addition, we added an open item “what do you think is the purpose of the study” for checking and controlling the potential common method biases. The questionnaires provided by the respondents who have guessed our study purpose would be removed from our sample.

When designing the above items to measure individual perceptions, we referred to some mature scales in the existing literature. The items of these scales may be more suitable for individuals in business or social organizations, but not necessarily for college students. We therefore not only set up a research team including 2 professors and 2 doctoral students to adapt the scales to suit the situation of Chinese colleges but also conducted a test on the items among a class of master students (18 people). We inquired each student about the correct understanding of the items and made several rounds of continuous improvement to increase the validity of the modified items.

Samples

We launched a survey on Sojump website (http://www.sojump.com) to collect data. It is a large professional online survey service platform in China. Many Chinese scholars have been supported by it during their academic research processes (Rui, 2017; Li and Yu, 2018). The authors paid 5 yuan (about 0.70 dollars) to the respondents.

The expected respondents were limited to college students. Although our research hypotheses seem to be suitable for individuals in any type of organization in the context of Eastern collective culture, we still chose students as samples while considering the feasibility of data collection. Several prior studies provide us with references, all of which collected questionnaire data of college students to measure the variables in terms of individual perception (Atakan et al., 2008; Guo et al., 2019; Iqbal et al., 2023). Guo et al. (2019) even found that there was no significant difference between college students and firm employees in terms of psychological perception.

Data collection consisted of two stages. First, on 18 September 2021, we distributed the questionnaire set as a high formalism scenario. After collecting enough sample data in the first stage, on 26 September 2021 we handed out the questionnaires in a low formalism scenario. We finally invited 587 respondents in the period of two weeks, but 51 of them were ruled invalid and finally, 536 valid questionnaires were retained. The effective rate was 91.31%. Since our study only involved 22 items, the sample has met the recommendation proposed by Hair et al. (2015) that the number of samples should be 10 to 15 times the number of items in SEM.

Among the valid questionnaires, 242 ones (sample 1) reflected the scenario of high formalism tasks, and others (294, sample 2) reflected low formalism tasks. Considering the complementarity of the two scenarios in the measurement of formalistic tasks, we believed that the combination of two samples could form a more complete measurement than any separate one. Therefore, we carried out data analysis based on the combined sample.

We used an independent-sample t-test to analyze the heterogeneity of the variables in the two samples. We did find significant differences in the variables of PV (t = −8.003, p = 0.000), CP (t = −4.695, p = 0.000), NP (t = −7.127, p = 0.000), and CD (t = −7.507, p = 0.000), confirming the effectiveness in manipulating the scenario. The fact that individuals’ PV and CD in high formalism tasks were lower than those in low formalism tasks was consistent with our general cognition. The lower CP and NP in high formalism tasks revealed that individuals might perceive lower pressures from leaders or co-workers since the tasks have been institutionally mandated. However, there was no significant difference in PC (t = 0.964, p = 0.328) between them, which indicated that an individual’s perception of resource input required by a formalistic task was not related to the high or low formalism, but related to some other factors such as task difficulty.

The demographic characteristics of the respondents were as follows. Male respondents accounted for 58.0%. In terms of age, 67.9% of the respondents were between 16 and 22, 28.9% between 23 and 28, and only 1.3% was 29 and above. In terms of affiliation, 50.0% of the respondents were from first-class universities in China, 45.3% were from ordinary universities, and others (4.7%) were from other colleges. In terms of major, 37.7% of the respondents learned humanities and social sciences, 28.4% natural sciences, technologies, and engineering, 26.5% medicine, biology, and agriculture, and finally, the respondents in other majors accounted for 7.5%. In terms of grade, 66.6% of the respondents were undergraduate, 22.8.3% were master students, and the rest were doctoral students, accounting for 7.6%. In terms of political status, 29.5% of the respondents was a member of the CPC, and others (70.5%) were not. Finally, 80% of the respondents used to be cadres.

Descriptive analysis and the tests of validity and reliability

We calculated the means, standard deviations (SD), and correlations of the core variables. The results are summarized in Table 1. The mean values showed that the individual perceptions and completion of formalistic tasks were at a high level, and the deviations were not large. The data complied with the requirements of homogeneity and normality. The appropriate correlations confirmed the relationships between the core variables and supported to completion of the subsequent work of hypothesis testing. Furthermore, the table also exhibited the discriminant validity of the constructs. The square root of the average variance extracted (AVE) of each construct was found to be larger than the correlations between the construct and others, confirming the adequacy of discriminant validity (Hair et al., 2015).

Table 1 Means, standard deviations, and correlations.
Full size table

As the result of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO = 0.959) and the significance of Bartlett test of sphericity (approximate chi square = 8310.562, and p = 0.000) indicated the suitability of factor analysis. We then added all variables for analyzing the rotation sums of squared loading. The results (see Table 2) showed that five latent constructs were extracted after varimax rotation for our final analysis. Each construct had an eigenvalue over 1, and all of them reported 64.473% of total variances. The results further confirmed the discriminant validity of the latent variables and the adequacy of the five-factor model for structural equation analysis.

Table 2 The results of CFA.
Full size table

We adopted procedural and statistical techniques to control common method bias (CMB). First, we disrupted the order of the items in the questionnaire to reduce the effect of respondent’s self-attribution. Second, according to Podsakoff et al. (2003), we ensured the anonymity and voluntariness of the recruited respondents. Third, we used Harman’s single-factor test to measure the CMB (Aguirre-Urreta and Hu, 2019). The first principal component with the largest eigenvalue accounted for 50% of the total variance, just meeting the requirement of the recommended value. In addition, as shown in Table 2, the goodness of the competitive model (five factors plus CMB) was not significantly and largely improved on the basis of the hypothetical model. Hence, the CMB of Study 2 was effectively controlled.

The convergence validity was measured via AVE. As shown in Table 3, all AVEs ranged from 0.410 to 0.615, basically meeting the criterion suggested by Hair et al. (2015). The KMOs of all constructs were higher than the threshold of 0.600, and their p-values of the Bartlett test of sphericity were <0.001. The standardized factor loading of the items ranged from 0.507 to 0.887. Only the factor loading of an item of PC was 0.419. That is, most of the loading was greater than the recommended value of 0.500 (Hair et al., 2015). The construct validity of our study was therefore confirmed.

Table 3 Reliability and validity.
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Cronbach’s alpha shows the internal consistency of a construct as a measure of reliability. As shown in Table 3, the alpha values of all constructs ranged from 0.651 to 0.932, most of which were above 0.700 recommended by Hair et al. (2015). Referring to Hatcher and Stepanski (1994), the construct with alpha 0.651 could also be accepted since it is above the threshold value of 0.600. In addition, the composite reliability (CR) values of all constructs ranged from 0.672 to 0.935, above the recommended value of 0.600 (Hair et al., 2016).

Data analysis techniques

In line with the results of CFA, we constructed a first-order reflective SEM for data analysis, testing the hypotheses developed in Study 2. The model included two independent latent constructs (i.e. PV and PC), two interactive latent constructs (i.e. CP × PC and NP × PC), and one dependent latent construct (i.e. CD). The independent and dependent latent constructs were measured by the corresponding observed items. According to the method proposed by Ping (1995), we measured the interactive latent constructs by introducing the pairwise interaction terms of the observed variables corresponding to the two interactive constructs. For example, the construct CP × PC was measured by 12 interactive terms including CP1 × PC1, CP1 × PC2, ……, CP3 × PC3, CP3 × PC4. The interactive latent constructs have also passed the tests of reliability and validity.

We chose the SEM technique to analyze our data because of the following considerations. First, it is an inferential statistical method for testing causal hypotheses and derives “quantitative causal conclusions and statistical measures of fit” (Bollen and Pearl, 2013). Second, compared with the regression model, it is more suitable for measuring the relationship between the latent constructs set in our study. Third, it allows the model to be measured with greater elasticity and can estimate the goodness of fit of the entire model. Finally, the properties of constructs in our study and the way we measured them are also suitable for modeling and data analysis of reflective SEM.

The tool for data analysis was AMOS 24.0. In addition to the advantages such as a friendly interface and easy operation, we selected the tool because of two reasons. First, it meets the demand of measuring first-order reflective SEM. Prior literature has used the tool to infer causal relationships and measure moderating effects (e.g. Kwak and Lee, 2021; Lee et al., 2013). Second, the medium size sample of our study meets the requirement of parameter estimation by this tool. In this case, it can make a more comprehensive estimate than the Smart-pls tool which is only suitable for small samples.

Model development

SEM is a linear cause-and-effect model that combines path analysis and factor analysis. Among them, path analysis expands the model of linear causal relationships. We constructed an SEM to measure the measurement model and structural model.

First, to measure the effect of PV on CD proposed by H1, we constructed the following model.

$$\eta _i = \alpha _\eta + B_1\eta _i + {{\Gamma }}_1\xi _i + \zeta _i$$
(1)
$${\rm {CD}}_i = \alpha _{{\rm {CD}}} + {{\Lambda }}_{{\rm {CD}}}\eta _i + \varepsilon _i$$
(2)
$${\rm {PV}}_i = \alpha _{{\rm {PV}}} + {{\Lambda }}_{{\rm {PV}}}\xi _i + \delta _i$$
(3)

Second, we developed the model to test the effect of PC on CD proposed by H2.

$$\eta _i = \beta _\eta + B_2\eta _i + {{\Gamma }}_2\xi _i + \zeta _i$$
(4)
$${\rm {CD}}_i = \beta _{{\rm {CD}}} + {{\Lambda }}_{{\rm {CD}}}\eta _i + \varepsilon _i$$
(5)
$${\rm {PC}}_i = \beta _{{\rm {PC}}} + {{\Lambda }}_{{\rm {PC}}}\xi _i + \delta _i$$
(6)

In the equations, the subscript of i stands for the ith case, ηi is the vector of latent endogenous variables, αη and βη are the vector of intercepts, B1 and B2 are the matrix of coefficients that give the expected effect of the ηi on ηi where their main diagonal are zero, ξi is the vector of latent exogenous variables, Γ1 and Γ2 are the matrix of coefficients that gives the expected effects of ξi on ηi, and ζi is the vector of equation disturbances that consists of all other influences of ηi that are not included in the equations.

Finally, we built the following models to measure the moderating effects of NP and CP on the relationship between PC and CD.

$${\rm {CD}}_i = i_1 + \lambda _1{\rm {PC}}_i + \mu _1{\rm {NP}}_i + \nu _1{\rm {PC}} \ast {\rm {NP}} + \varphi _{i1}$$
(7)
$${\rm {CD}}_i = i_2 + \lambda _2{\rm {PC}}_i + \mu _2{\rm {CP}}_i + \nu _2{\rm {PC}} \ast {\rm {CP}} + \varphi _{i2}$$
(8)

In the equations, i1 and i2 are constant terms, λ, μ, and v are regression coefficients of the corresponding variables, φ is random error term. PC*NP and PC*CP are complex matrices with pairwise interaction terms of the items attached to the two interactive variables respectively.

Results

The results of Study 1

The definition of formalistic task

We aimed to make the definition of a formalistic task on the basis of the investigation of respondents’ feelings and status when suffering the task. Hence, we developed three items to achieve the purpose, including (a) in what context do formalistic tasks often occur, (b) why do formalistic tasks happen, and (c) what’s about the PV of formalistic tasks. The answers given by respondents from the perspective of recipients are shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1: The contexts, causes, and perceptions of formalistic tasks from the cognitive perspective of college students.
figure 1

The letter labels in parentheses correspond to three items, i.e., a in what context do formalist tasks often occur, b why do formalist tasks happen, and c what’s about the PV of formalistic tasks. The data in the figure represent the proportion of respondents who checked the corresponding options in the total sample.

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According to part (a) of Fig. 1, college students were more frequently involved in formalistic tasks or made a stronger sense of the formalism of the tasks when they were in administrative management situations than in spontaneous contexts such as course activities and culture construction activities. The results of Fig. 1b indicated that students would perceive strong formalism of the tasks when task arrangers were pursuing superficial performance, individual face, and formalization and routinization. Figure 1c revealed that the characteristics of formalistic tasks in terms of PV could be summarized as meaningless, mandatory, utilitarian, etc.

Based on the above considerations, we therefore defined the connotation of formalistic task. It is a kind of task that originates from the managers’ pursuit of superficial performance, individual face, and procedural formalization and managerial routinization in administrative and controlling management situations so that always being subjectively considered as not good by the recipients due to their perceptions of meaninglessness, compulsion, and utilitarianism. The definition does not deny the value of formalistic tasks to leaders and organizations, but the value is often difficult to be directly perceived by the student recipients.

The motivation for completing formalistic tasks

The willingness of students to attend and complete formalistic tasks is motivated by the psychological interaction of individual perception of responsibility and the perceived expectation placed by environmental factors such as institutions and the influence of others. Hence, we developed several items to explore the potential motivating factors. The results are displayed in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2: The motivating factors of attending formalistic tasks.
figure 2

The answers “no” and “yes” indicate the proportion of the respondents who disagree and agree with the corresponding motivating factor, respectively.

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According to the figure, the majority of the respondents agreed that the factors involving the PP from morality, institution, superior, and peer could influence individual behaviors when they performed formalistic tasks. In the context of university education, whether students are willing to participate in formalistic tasks is not only driven by the pressure of self-responsibility and assessment system but also influenced by the motivation of teachers and classmates. Thus, we confirmed that PP is an important moderator of the CD of formalistic tasks. Formalistic tasks therefore may be performed in a herd effect, i.e. the group decision would be led by some forerunners who choose to support or not support the tasks.

The relationship between PV and CD of formalistic tasks

The distribution of the respondents on different levels of PV and CD is shown in Table 4. The table revealed that more respondents tended to perceive a low level of the value of formalistic tasks for individuals (50.85%) than for their organizations (72.20%). The law is consistent with our existing knowledge. However, compared with the perception of individual value, lesser people (27.80%) failed to perceive the high organizational value of formalistic tasks. It might not indicate the low level of organizational value, but revealed the difficulty for students as ordinary individuals to link the promotion of formalistic tasks with the pursuit of organizational value. The phenomenon is related to students’ cognitive ability, constituting an important cause for formalistic tasks easily being treated negatively. Furthermore, according to the table, a majority of respondents (62.03% = 22.72% + 39.32%) tended to express their weak willingness to complete formalistic tasks. However, regardless of the level of willingness, most people (73.90%) chose to support and complete the tasks. It could probably be attributed to the coercive characteristic of such tasks.

Table 4 The contingency table for showing the relationship between PV and CD.
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The results of Study 2

A two-stage SEM procedure including a measurement model and structural model was performed by AMOS to test the hypothetical model of our study. Several goodness-of-fit indicators such as relative chi-squared (χ2/df), and AGFI for overall fit, as well as NFI, CFI, and TLI for measurement model fit, have been developed to avoid poor model evaluation (Cheung and Rensvold, 2002). The χ2/df should be around or <3.0 (Cheung and Rensvold, 2002). For our study, its value is 3.275, slightly above 3.0, and within the acceptable range. For the remaining four indexes, values above 0.90 are evidence of good model fit (Hair et al., 2015). For our model, three of four values were above 0.90 (NFI = 0.924, CFI = 0.946, and TLI = 0.936), whereas AGFI = 0.866 was slightly below 0.90. Nevertheless, we deemed the results as satisfactory in correspondence with the fit values. Furthermore, the RMSEA value for our model was 0.065, which was slightly above the strictly recommended value of 0.05, considered a close fit of the model (Byrne, 2013).

We examined the hypothetical model through a path analysis by AMOS 24.0. The results shown in Fig. 3 revealed that (a) PV was significantly and positively associated with the CD of formalistic tasks (estimate = 0.847, p < 0.001), supporting H1, (b) PC was significantly but negatively associated with CD (estimate = −0.562, p < 0.001), supporting H2, and (c) PP including CP (estimate = −0.0003, p < 0.05) and NP (estimate = −0.0000, p < 0.001) made significant but negative moderating effects on the relationship between PC and CD although the effects appeared to be very weak, therefore supporting H3. Consequently, all the hypotheses proposed in our study have been passed the test.

Fig. 3: The results of SEM.
figure 3

***p < 0.001, **p < 0.05.

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In order to further confirm the results of the study, we constructed an alternative model that highlighted the mediating role of PC in the relationship between PV and CD in line with the expectancy-value theory. We estimated the model and found that although some effects were still significant, its fitting indicators became worse. For instance, the value of χ2/df (8.808) was much higher than the recommended value 3.0, thus supporting to rule out of the alternative configuration.

Conclusions

Findings

Through the study, we mainly got the following five findings.

First, formalistic tasks are significantly sensitive to contexts. In formalized and top-down organizational culture, individuals are more likely to perceive the formalistic characteristics of tasks. The perception affects their support and completion of the tasks.

Second, the generation of formalistic tasks mostly stems from leaders’ pursuits of face, formalization, and superficial performance that differ from their subordinates in top-down organizational culture. These pursuits tend to consume the resources of the subordinates but make them feel meaningless. The compulsory characteristic of formalistic tasks is thus revealed due to the psychological conflict.

Third, environmental factors play an important incentive role in the completion of formalistic tasks. The requirements of the tasks, the guidance of close leaders, and the advice of co-workers put pressure on an individual’s decision and behavior for completing the tasks.

Fourth, in terms of goals and perceptions, the inconsistency between superiors and subordinates makes the subordinates deviate from their perception and willingness in the CD of formalist tasks. In other words, low willingness may be also accompanied by high task completion.

Finally, empirical evidence shows that formalistic tasks are not intrinsically different from general business tasks in the logic of perception. The expectation and evaluation of the value and costs of formalistic tasks fundamentally determine the degree of individual support and completion of the tasks. PP does play a significant role, but its effect is weaker than the influence of PV and PC.

Discussion

Our study extends the application of COR theory to the interpretation of formalistic tasks. Existing research on COR emphasizes the decision-making and behaviors of individuals under rational perception, which are controlled by the pressure response of individuals to resource gain or loss in future strategic actions (Sun and Chen, 2017; Yousaf et al., 2020). However, the compulsion of formalist tasks may limit the role of individual rationality and emphasize more on collective rationality. In this case, whether COR can explain the response mechanism of formalistic tasks becomes uncertain. Our study confirmed that individuals could perceive the context of formalistic tasks and show their perception and evaluation of the value, costs, and pressure of formalistic tasks under rational thinking, but individuals have a strong adjustment ability to balance their willingness (individual rationality) and the completion degree of responding to the tasks (collective rationality). The ability was unexpected previously. That is, COR is still suitable for predicting individuals’ responses to formalistic tasks.

Our study reinforces and integrates the consciousness-context-behavior (CCB) framework (Wang, 2015) and the expectancy-value theory (Perez et al., 2019). The CCB framework establishes the unity of individual consciousness and behavior in a specific context. However, our study holds that task context may also separate individuals’ rational perception from their action strategy. For example, in the context of formalistic tasks, individuals may show low PV and low willingness but high completion of the tasks. It could be explained by the expectancy-value theory. The theory holds that individuals’ perception of a task includes both positive value and potential cost (Perez et al., 2019). We confirmed the significant effect of individuals’ PC of formalistic tasks on the action. We also found that the effect was mediated by contextual pressures, which in turn was consistent with the theoretical expression of the CCB framework. Therefore, the framework was strengthened by us.

Our results show that students’ behavior of formalistic tasks in organizations would be moderated by PP, indicating that individuals’ behaviors are easily influenced by collective culture. In oriental countries such as China, collective culture is a part of social morality and has a great normative influence on individuals (Frederickson, 2002). The culture highlights the importance of managing the relationship with others and the necessity of obeying authority. Our result that individuals would be forced by coercive and normative pressures to complete the tasks unwilling to do and with low PV has confirmed such a phenomenon. When an individual makes a decision on the completion of formalistic tasks, the priority to integrating into a group or expressing uniqueness is an important choice. The idea is in line with the view proposed by Barkema et al. (2015) that Chinese pay more attention to harmony at work. According to COR theory, the choice would also be an individual’s dominant strategy, since when he/she adopts the same strategy as the group, his/her risk of resource loss would be minimized.

Since few studies have paid attention to the governance of formalistic tasks, existing studies of illegitimate tasks and bureaucratic tasks could give us some inspiration. However, these studies focused on the negative effects such as individual’s negative emotions (e.g., resentment, anger, and negative coping) (Munir et al., 2017; Ahmed et al., 2018), the weakening of positive attitudes (dissatisfaction, reduced engagement, and increased turnover intention) (Eatough et al., 2016; van Schie et al., (2014)), and the reduction of organizational performance (counterproductive and passive work, and deviant behavior) (Schulte-Braucks et al., 2019)). Nevertheless, a study is also worthy of attention. Liu et al. (2019) proposed that instead of focusing on the negative effects of illegitimate tasks, we need to pay more attention to how individuals deal with them. Liu et al. (2019) suggested individuals adopt the positive coping strategy of task crafting to alleviate the negative effects. The strategy emphasizes that individuals properly adjust their perceptions and work performance, making individual goal approach towards a collective goal, so as to obtain more sense of work meaning and identity. The view is basically consistent with the value proposition of our study.

Regarding the governance strategy of formalistic tasks, we want to introduce the suggestion proposed by Kishita and Shimada (2011). As their proposal, the task performance could be enhanced through increases in job control on the basis of work redesign and in psychological acceptance on the basis of the improvement of individual perception (Kishita and Shimada, 2011). Our study reached a similar conclusion to the study of Kishita and Shimada (2011), that subjective stress or perceived pressure was expected to play an important moderating role, but empirical results suggested that the role was actually very weak relative to the main effect. We therefore concluded that an individual’s perception of task value and costs is the internal motivator of the completion of formalistic tasks while the perception of environmental pressure constitutes an external motivator, and the internal motivator plays a decisive role in the mechanism while the external one makes a weak moderating effect.

It is possible that our conclusions can be extended to other social contexts though the sample of the study is limited to college students because of the following reasons. First, as far as possible, we set up a context-free analytical framework to construct the theory. In our model, the constructs such as PV, PC, and PP, are not context-dependent. Second, according to the authors’ observation of Chinese cases, although formalistic tasks have different forms and characteristics in colleges, enterprises and government organizations, there is no fundamental difference in their occurrence mechanism as well as subordinates’ perception and support mechanisms. Finally, college students who are mentally sound adults can make the right appraisals and show their affection about opportunities and risks in task contexts, so their psychological cognitive mechanism, behavioral decisions, and task performance should not be very different from that of firm employees or government officials (Chen and Qu, 2021). Hence, our findings should extend to other social contexts, such as civil servants being forced to do superficial face-saving work, firm employees being required to attend unexpected and irrelevant meetings, and children being impelled by their parents to learn without effective supervision. The authors are actually launching a survey in Chinese firms to further examine the perception mechanism of formalistic tasks in the context of employees’ routine work.

Implications

The contribution of our study to literature is threefold. First, we initiated an exploratory analysis of the formalistic task and made a clear definition of its connotation and characteristics, which would arouse more scholars to pay attention to it. Second, the study introduced COR theory into the analysis of formalistic tasks, guiding to explore the strategies for governing them from the perspective of receptor’s perception. Finally, the study established a perception-pressure-behavior theoretical framework for formalist tasks, which leads to develop the bottom-up governance logic for formalistic tasks.

The study inspired us to better assign, perceive and complete formalistic tasks from five aspects. First, when arranging tasks, we suggested improving the context of the tasks and integrating them with general business tasks as much as possible, so as to reduce individuals’ perceived risk of resource loss and in turn their resistance to the tasks. Second, leaders who assign tasks need to strengthen communication with their subordinates, so that the latter can understand the purpose and expected effect of the assigned tasks, so as to achieve consistency in cognition and goals between superiors and subordinates. Third, organizations should attach importance to the construction of soft environment and give full play to the positive influence of contextual pressure on individual participation and completion of formalistic tasks. Fourth, organizations need to be able to tolerate the bias of ordinary employees’ perception of the value of formalistic tasks culturally. Tolerance is conducive to the harmony of the organizations when the negative effect of formalistic tasks cannot be fundamentally eliminated. Finally, when assigning tasks, leaders need to have an accurate prediction of subordinates’ perceived value and perceived cost of the tasks and then strike a balance between the two in an appropriate form, so as to reconcile the targeted performance of individuals and organizations.

Limitations and future research

Our study has several limitations that should be noted. First, though the sample size and type of the study have addressed the requirement of SEM analysis for parameter estimation, it is still insufficient according to China’s large population. Second, the data of independent and dependent variables rated by the same respondents in a time may cause CMB. Third, our study limited the sample to college students, which reduced the generalization of the findings. Fourth, cross-sectional data used in our study can only reflect the correlations between the considered variables but cannot infer the causal relationships. Fifth, the self-developed scale in the study needs more tests and improvements in the future. Sixth, in Study 2, our classification of high and low formalistic tasks may bring certain biases to the research results and conclusions. Subsequent researchers and managers should carefully use our research results according to the actual situations. Finally, the study only completes a preliminary exploration of individuals’ perceptions and behaviors of formalistic tasks. In the future, we plan to expand and deepen the research by establishing an improved framework through introducing mediating variables (e.g., self-efficacy) and moderating variables (e.g., task difficulty), improving the measurements, and expanding samples.