“…In fact, most recent studies argue that the condition necessary to clearly demonstrate and justify the presence of a mediating effect between two variables of interest, is to confirm the significance of an indirect effect between the two, regardless of the presence of “an effect to be mediated” ( Hayes, 2009 , 2013 ; Preacher et al, 2007 ; Zhao et al, 2010 ). This approach has been gaining increasing popularity in the organizational and psychology literature (e.g., Mostafa & Bottomley, 2018 ; Romani, Grappi, & Bagozzi, 2013 ; Santos, Zanette, Kwok, Heyman, & Lee, 2017 ) as it allows for more rigorous testing of mediating effects.…”