# How to promote student creativity through AI in higher education: the role of students’ attitude and digital competencies

## TL;DR

This study explores how AI use in higher education affects student creativity, highlighting the roles of digital skills and student attitudes.

## Contribution

The study distinguishes between learning and entertainment AI use, identifies digital competencies as a key mechanism, and reveals nuanced effects of AI attitudes.

## Key findings

- Learning and entertainment-oriented AI use both enhance digital competencies, which boost student creativity.
- Digital competencies fully mediate the link between learning-oriented AI use and creativity.
- Positive attitudes toward AI strengthen entertainment AI effects but weaken learning AI effects on digital competencies.

## Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly integrated into higher education, yet how different purposes of AI use influence student creativity remains underexplored. In particular, little is known about the mediating role of digital competencies and the moderating role of students’ attitudes toward AI. Drawing on Social Cognitive Theory, this study examines how AI use for learning and AI use for entertainment relate to student creativity through digital competencies, and how attitudes toward AI condition these relationships. Data were collected from 271 undergraduate students majoring in Traditional Chinese Medicine in China and analyzed using PLS-SEM and moderated mediation analysis. The results show that both learning-oriented and entertainment-oriented AI use positively relate to digital competencies, which in turn enhance student creativity. Digital competencies fully mediate the relationship between AI use for learning and creativity and partially mediate the relationship between AI use for entertainment and creativity. Moreover, attitudes toward AI play a dual moderating role: positive attitudes strengthen the effect of entertainment-oriented AI use but weaken the effect of learning-oriented AI use on digital competencies. This study contributes to the literature by distinguishing different purposes of AI use, identifying digital competencies as a key explanatory mechanism, and revealing the nuanced role of attitudes toward AI in shaping creativity outcomes. It also offers practical implications for designing AI-supported educational practices in specialized domains such as Traditional Chinese Medicine.