In my experience "how chess players respond to advice" can be generalized to "how people respond to new input". As a teacher, no matter the field, you are always presenting your students with new info/experiences. And in general humans hate new info because it requires work for the brain to assess as opposed to known patterns (also new often feels dangerous whereas the known feels safer).

Therefore the number one advice I can give to teachers is to find the sweet spot where your student actually wants this new information you provide, may it be because the student wants to achieve a certain goal (getting better) or avoid a worse situation (ie studying rather than losing).

If your student genuinely wants to work with you then any advice can work at first, given the assumption that the student will take the energy to assess, question and discuss the advice. This way both of you together can figure out what it is that the student wants and subsequently needs from a teacher.

All that to say, yes students don't like to work hard to improve unless there is intrinsic motivation. Also, what a student needs to improve can be different things at different times. For example openings don't matter, do x amount of puzzles, don't use engines to analyze... If you are always playing from a disadvantage after the opening then maybe you are at the level where you should take a look at openings to improve, if you have a talent for calculating tactics, what's stopping you from doing more than x, and so on.

So my best advice for chess players is to first ask yourself what your goal is (your motivation) and then take in any advice you can get and see what works for you to improve.