Currently, there is an increasing number of postgraduate enrollments in Chinese higher education institutions. In 2021, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that there are 3.33 million graduate students currently enrolled, with 1.18 million new enrollments (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2022). The increasing postgraduate enrollments in China may challenge the graduation education and management of higher education institutions. Comparing to undergraduate students, postgraduates students are more competent in education and professional skills, however, they may face profound pressures on economic, academic, family, interpersonal relationship and employment. Due to the life challenges that postgraduates may encounter, postgraduates are more susceptible to mental health issues. Study found that postgraduates do have a higher incidence of interpersonal and mental health problems (Luo et al., 2015). Also, comparing to undergraduate students, postgraduates have higher suicide rates (Feng et al., 2015). Nowadays, postgraduates’ mental health and well-being has begun to attract increasing attention from researchers, for example, research has shown that the detection rate of mental health problems of postgraduates is 12.3% (Ye et al., 2017), among which the three most common psychological problems postgraduates face are compulsion, depression, and interpersonal sensitivity (Zhou, 2018). Anxiety is also a common disorder among postgraduates (Feng and Zhang, 2017), with the pressures experienced reflected primarily through sleep, emotional, and social interaction issues (Song et al., 2019). There are relatively limited researches focus on the group of postgraduates worldwide, which could be explained by that outside of China, postgraduates may cover a wider age span and more variety in status. The outbreak of COVID-19 is another crucial crisis event for college students, which severely affected the well-being of college students, the prevalence of depressive symptoms during the pandemic in college students is 26.0%, and significantly higher prevalence in postgraduates than in undergraduates (Luo et al., 2021).

Well-being refers to one’s evaluation of satisfaction and happiness of quality of their current lives, in that a higher sense of well-being entails an individual experiencing more positive emotion and fewer negative emotions (Diener et al., 1999). It is a happy state of mind (Huang et al., 2012), which encompasses one’s overall evaluation of their existing sense of quality of life and mental health, according to their own standards of well-being (Zhu and Liu, 2019). Well-being plays an important role in motivating individuals to improve their individual quality of life and mental health, maintain interpersonal harmony, and shape a rational and peaceful social mentality. For postgraduate students, well-being reflects their evaluation of quality of life, and has an impact on their ability to adapt in life, and further their academic research and career development. Research has shown that the well-being level of postgraduates is significantly lower than that of undergraduates (Jiang and Chen, 2020).

Emotional intelligence refers to an individual’s ability to process emotional information accurately and effectively. It is a skill developed through both learning and experience which, at its core, is about how to perceive, use, understand, and manage emotions (Mayer et al., 1999). People with high emotional intelligence can effectively identify emotions in daily interpersonal communication – both their own and others’ – producing positive attitudes and then make appropriate emotional and behavioral responses. In doing this, these individuals then experience a higher level of mental health as well as garnering more social support (Huang and Dai, 1997; Zeidner et al., 2009). Bar-On’s emotional social intelligence model proposes that emotional intelligence is a combination of the effective understanding of one’s self and others, getting along well with others, and successful adaptation and responses to one’s environment, eventually bringing about a sense of well-being (Xu and Zhang, 2002; Bar-On, 2010). Studies have shown that emotional intelligence plays a key role in well-being (Gallagher and Vella-Brodrick, 2008; Mavroveli et al., 2011; Wang and Cai, 2015; Liang and Wang, 2018; Li, 2020). Individuals with high emotional intelligence have been shown to be better at perceiving, regulating, and controlling their actions and responses, experience a more positive emotional experience in their surrounding environment, feel a higher level of life satisfaction, and are better able to create and achieve stronger levels of well-being (Higgs and Dulewicz, 2014). This is especially evident in younger age groups such as college students (Wu et al., 2016).

Ecological System Theory proposes that an individual exists in a series of mutual influences, nested in an environmental system. EST has been long discussed by scholars to link biological, psychological and social environments. According to the Bronfenbrenner’s theory, there are five systems of ecological model, each contained within the next level of system. The five systems are interrelated, so the human Development is then the result of interactions between individual factors and ecological environment factors. The first level is Microsystem, relationship in this level is bi-directional, which means individual could be influenced by others also have capacity to influence others. The microsystem refers to the parents, peers, schools and etc. Second level is mesosystem, which refers the connections or interactions between the microsystems, such as the connections between the family, teachers and peers. Third level is exosystem, involving the social structures do not contain individuals themselves, for example, parents’ workplaces, parent’s friends and mass media. The fourth level is macrosystem, focuses on the cultural elements, such as socioeconomic status and ethnicity. The final level is chronosystem, consists of all environment events and transitions over the lifetime. Based on the concepts of ECT, it is necessary to explore the factors that affect the well-being of postgraduates not only at the individual level, but also with consideration of interaction mechanisms at play with the ecological environment (Zhou et al., 2020). The current study explores the influential patterns of emotional intelligence on postgraduates’ well-being, includes microsystem level structures.

Self-determination theory, which proposed by the Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, refers to each person’s ability to make decisions and manage their own life (Deci and Ryan, 2008). This theory demonstrated that motivation is the most basic intrinsic drive for individuals to complete any tasks or behave. Higher self-determination represents more internal form of motivation, and low self-determination associates with more external form of motivation and amotivation. SDT suggests that there are three psychological needs: autonomy, the need of sense of feeling control of their own behaviors and goals; competence, the need of gaining master of tasks and skills; relatedness, the need of sense of belonging and attach to other people. Research has shown that individuals who are autonomously will exhibit better emotional regulation and integration of negative affect (Weinstein and Hodgins, 2009). Emotional Competence is also an important part for well-being, Kotsou et al. (2011) investigated the training program to enhance the emotional competence, and find that emotional competence significantly related to physical and subjective well-being. Further, the social support also aligns with another domain of SDT, the need for relatedness. Previous study already demonstrated the association of social support and mental health (Poudel et al., 2020). Another theory similar to the SDT is Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, which defines as people’s capacities to control over their own functioning, which contains four domains: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion and emotional states. The differences of SDT and SET is that SDT suggests that the feeling of competence, autonomy and relatedness is a more distal factor to behavior, which focuses more on the motivation, on the contrary, self-efficacy has a more direct influence on behaviors (Sweet et al., 2012). Both theories will further suggest the emotional intelligence and social support are key elements of well-beings.

Existing studies have focused more on the relationship between emotional intelligence and well-being, with other researches limited to exploring the intermediary role of variables such as self-esteem and interpersonal trust, and lacked mechanism analysis of the internal relationship of other factors (such as social support, psychological resilience, etc.). Social support, as an important component of social relations (Hakulinen et al., 2016), refers to the emotional, financial, material, and other forms of resource support provided by others (e.g., family, friends, classmates, teachers, neighbors) when one is in need. Social support plays an important protective role in maintaining individual mental health, alleviating and improving bad emotions (Li et al., 2017). A strong level of social support reflects a harmonious relationship between an individual and the micro-systems surrounding them, promoting positive personality formation, cognitive development and social adaptation (Zhang et al., 2019). In the case of postgraduates, one’s social support system has been found to be the first way many are able to lower psychological pressures (Song et al., 2019). The Main Effect Model of social support notes that regardless of whether an individual is in a state of stress or not, one’s sense of social support has a positive effect on their life, enhancing the individual’s sense of well-being (Cohen, 2004). Social support can both improve positive emotions and reduce negative emotions (Uchino et al., 1996), and has a positive impact on one’s perceived level of well-being (Luo and Mu, 2017). There is also a close relationship between social support and emotional intelligence. People with high emotional intelligence tend to feel more subjective and objective social support and make better use of it (Zhu, 2006). This means that such individuals have stronger skills in social adaptability, which improves the quality of their interpersonal relations and therefore their level of well-being. This has been confirmed by numerous studies which have explored social support as an intermediary variable (Zeidner and Matthews, 2016; Xiao and Hou, 2017; Dehghani, 2018). Ecosystem Theory suggests that social support, as an external positive protective factor for the development of postgraduates’ level of well-being, plays an intermediary role in the relationship between emotional intelligence and subjective well-being (He et al., 2020).

Psychological Resilience is a psychological process in which individuals make use of many positive factors to maintain and develop their physical and mental health to find well-being in their lives when they are faced with various pressures, setbacks, or difficulties (Wang and Wang, 2013). Some studies have found that a considerable number of postgraduates lack resilience and self-confidence, with the proportion of postgraduates with low psychological resilience accounting for 15% (Gong et al., 2020). Meanwhile, the relationship between psychological resilience and negative emotions appears to be regulated by age, with the association stronger in adults than in children or adolescents (Hu et al., 2015), further highlighting the need to focus on postgraduates’ psychological resilience. Cultivating psychological resilience in young academics can lessen academic stress, simultaneously enhancing their levels of physical and mental health and increasing their positive emotions (Liu et al., 2015; An and Pei, 2017). Research has also found a significant positive correlation between life satisfaction, positive emotion, and psychological resilience, and psychological resilience is shown to have a strong positive predictive effect on one’s well-being (Yang et al., 2012). People with high emotional intelligence have a higher tolerance for life changes, setbacks, and adversity, and show fewer negative behaviors which indicates that have stronger levels of psychological resilience. Emotional intelligence is therefore an important factor affecting postgraduates’ psychological resilience (Wen et al., 2014). If postgraduates can effectively perceive, understand, and adjust their internal emotions, and, when affected by strong emotional fluctuations, are nonetheless able to quickly and smoothly return to a normal psychological state, they are better able to muster more positive energy internally to deal with the difficulties they face.

Psychological Resilience Theory asserts that one’s personal abilities and traits are not the only determinants of psychological resilience, but that external factors such as family support and social support also play an important role (Olsson et al., 2003). Psychological resilience involves an interaction with environments of positive social support which contribute to improvements in psychological resilience (Bradley et al., 2013). Studies have confirmed that social support can be a protective factor for psychological resilience (Glozah and Pevalin, 2014), with positive family relationships enabling adolescents to obtain even more positive feedback from their families (Wu et al., 2014), and positive peer and teacher-student relationships also enhancing students’ psychological resilience (Morrison and Allen, 2007). When faced with adversity, they can then demonstrate more resilience because of their sufficient inner senses of security and self-confidence. This indicates a strong interaction between social support and psychological resilience, and we infer that there is an active mechanism between postgraduates’ social support and psychological resilience in the relationship between emotional intelligence and well-being. Specifically, we expected that postgraduates with high emotional intelligence are able to make better use of social supports to deal with psychological imbalances and stressors such as issues in interpersonal communication, academic research pressures, career anxiety, and maintaining stable and harmonious communication with others, which leads to them being able to attain a more fulfilling level of well-being.

Existing research into the emotional lives of postgraduates has largely focused on levels of emotional intelligence, while the interactions between the factors of emotional intelligence, well-being, social support, and psychological resilience are also of profound significance. The current study will further analyze the internal mechanism of emotional intelligence on well-being in an attempt to provide a scientific basis for education on postgraduates’ well-being, and to improve mental health educators’ understandings of the importance of addressing and developing postgraduates’ emotional intelligence, social support, and psychological resilience in practice, in order to enhance postgraduates’ senses of well-being.

The current study focused on Chinese postgraduates, constructing a chain mediation model based on ecosystem theory, and examined the chain mediating role of social support and psychological resilience between emotional intelligence and well-being. The findings showed that the research hypothesis was supported.

The current study reveals a significant positive correlation between the emotional intelligence and well-being of postgraduates, and that social support plays an intermediary role between emotional intelligence and well-being, while psychological resilience mediates between emotional intelligence and well-being. Social support and psychological resilience mediate the chain between emotional intelligence and well-being.

The original contributions presented in this study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee for the School of Educational Sciences, Yangzhou University. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

ZS contributed to conception, design of the study and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. ZX and HJ collected the raw data and organized the database. CX performed the statistical analysis. DX revised it critically for important intellectual content. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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