Abstract
Many students often view higher education settings as unwelcoming or emotionally cold, which can make their academic journey more challenging. Despite growing interest in how students experience their campus environment, there’s still very little research that looks closely at how academic stress might explain the link between how students feel about their campus climate and how well they perform academically. Therefore, the present study aimed at investigating the intervening role of perceived academic stress in relationship between students’ perceived campus climate and academic achievement by taking the Study-Demand-Resources (SD-R) model as a theoretical framework. The study participants were 360 regular undergraduate students of Debre Markos University, Ethiopia. A cross-sectional research design was employed. Consequently, students generally had a positive perception of the campus climate. Students experienced high levels of academic stress, since lower scores on the scale represent higher stress. The study also revealed a positive campus climate perceptions are linked to less stress and better academic performance. However, academic stress has a negative impact on academic achievement. Finally in the present study, academic stress acted as an intervening factor between perceived campus climate and academic achievement. This result validates the SD-R model's premise that stress plays a significant role in linking the interaction between resources (like campus atmosphere) and outcomes (like academic achievement). The research also adds to the theory and literature by shedding light on how students view the campus environment, academic stress, and academic success within the Ethiopian setting.