Abstract: The global financial crisis which broke out in 2008 has landed the world economy in a difficult situation. Undoubtedly, the employment of Chinese college students has also been influenced by the ongoing crisis. In this time of hardship, confidence is regarded as an invaluable asset to face the challenge. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between college students’ economic confidence and their self-efficacy to be employed, which was operationally defined as career decision making self-efficacy (CDMSE) in the study, to examine the moderating roles of locus of control and proactive personality between the two, and thereby, to identify the psychological processes underlying self-efficacy.A survey was administered to a cluster sample of 513 college students to explore the associations between economic confidence, career decision making self-efficacy (CDMSE), locus of control and proactive personality. Hierarchical regression analyses were processed to explore the predicting role of economic confidence on CDMSE as well as to examine the moderating roles of locus of control and proactive personality. The results showed that after controlling for the effects of school, gender and location of family, economic confidence displayed a main effect on CDMSE (β= 0.28, p<0.001). Specifically, the high-confidence participants had much stronger self-efficacy on career decision making than their low-confidence counterparts. Locus of control served to moderate this association, in which external locus of control predicted a more significant positive association (simple slope = 0.35, p<0.01 ) while internal locus of control predicted a less significant association (simple slope = 0.14, p<0.05) between economic confidence and CDMSE. Besides, proactive personality also served to moderate the association between economic confidence and CDMSE in that weak proactive personality predicted a positive association between the two (simple slope = 0.20, p<0.01) while strong proactive personality predicted no significant association (simple slope = 0.03, p=0.49). Additionally, when both moderators were included in the same model, the proactive personality showed a consistent strong moderating effect on the relationship between economic confidence and CDMSE while locus of control had no significant effect. In other words, when predicting the association between economic confidence and CDMSE, proactive personality was more important than attribution style.
The theoretical and practical implications of the findingsfrom the study were discussed. It was argued that findings enriched the theory of career decision making self-efficacy by confirming the moderating roles of attribution style and proactivepersonality in the relationship between the perception of economic environment and CDMSE. It suggests, based on the findings, that consultants from Career Planning and Employment Guidance Centre in university should train students to learn internal attributions and encourage them to be more optimistic.

Key words: economic confidence, career decision making self-efficacy, locus of control, proactive personality