How Stress Hinders Health among Chinese Public Sector Employees: The Mediating Role of Emotional Exhaustion and the Moderating Role of Perceived Organizational Support

Abstract

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, this study examines the detrimental effect of hindrance stressors on self-rated health among a sample of Chinese public sector employees. Analysis of survey data based on 404 MPA students from a leading Chinese university who are working in various public organizations across China suggested that hindrance stressors were negatively related to both physical and mental health (β = −0.11, p < 0.01 and β = −0.38, p < 0.001, respectively), and emotional exhaustion mediated those relationships (95% bias-corrected confidence intervals for the indirect effects on physical and mental health based on 5000 bootstrapped samples were −1.64 to −0.35 and −3.51 to −1.81, respectively, excluding 0). Furthermore, perceived organizational support moderated the effect of hindrance stressors on emotional exhaustion (β = −0.10, p < 0.05), and moderated the indirect effects of hindrance stressors on physical and mental health via emotional exhaustion (index of moderated mediation was 0.116 with bootstrapped confidence interval of 0.018–0.296 for physical health, and 0.317 with bootstrapped confidence interval of 0.008–0.663 for mental health). The effects of hindrance stressors were weaker when perceived organizational support was high, suggesting a moderating effect. Our findings not only provide important theoretical contributions to the literature on public employees’ work-related stress and associated health outcomes, but also offer practical implications to those who are interested in stress intervention to improve the wellbeing of public employees and general society.

Social Support and Well-Being of Chinese Special Education Teachers—An Emotional Labor Perspective

“…Hochschild [ 33 ] divided emotional labor into deep acting and surface acting: (1) Deep acting is regarded as being consistent with employees’ real perceptions and allows employees to truly “perform themselves”. Meanwhile, intrinsic emotions are adjusted to conform to the extrinsic emotional performance [ 34 , 35 ]. When real intrinsic negative emotions are involved, employees with deep acting attempt to make modifications to their performed emotions [ 18 , 33 ].…”

“…(2) Employees with surface acting are involved in the simulation of non-truly perceived emotions, attempting to adjust their extrinsic behaviors or inhibit their negative emotion without changing their intrinsic emotional performance, to be consistent with the organizational norms. Careful extrinsic verbal expression or the transmission of non-verbal information can present false emotions through facial expressions, posture, and tone [ 34 , 35 ].…”

The double-edged sword effect of performance pressure on public employees: The mediation role of mission valence

“…Many previous studies have confirmed that gender, age, education, marriage, and other demographic characteristics affect vigor, dedication, and burnout ( Cordes and Dougherty, 1993 ; Maslach et al, 2001 ). Existing literature about Chinese public employees regarded rank, age, education, tenure, and so on as the controlled variables ( Bao and Zhong, 2019 ; Lu and Guy, 2019 ; Xie and Yang, 2021 ). We controlled the gender, age, rank, workhour, tenure, education, and job category.…”

“…Vigor refers to high levels of energy and mental resilience, willingness to devote one’s effort to their work, and persistence in the face of difficulties; dedication is characterized by being strongly involved in one’s job and experiencing a sense of inspiration, significance, enthusiasm, and pride ( Bakker et al, 2008 ). Previous studies have shown that work and organizational level antecedents affect vigor and dedication, including demanding citizens ( Eldor, 2018 ), hindrance stressors ( Bao and Zhong, 2019 ), organizational climate ( Pecino et al, 2019 ), empathy, affect, and personality ( Martos Martinez et al, 2021 ), job demands, and resources ( Bakker et al, 2008 , 2014 ; Maslach and Leiter, 2008 ), and daily task performance ( Hetland et al, 2022 ). As for public sector employees, one of the most important factors is performance pressure.…”

Effect of Role Conflict and Ambiguity on Job Satisfaction Mediated by Emotional Exhaustion

“…Berbagai faktor menjadi prediktor kepuasan kerja karyawan, antara lain keadilan prosedural dan distributif (Junita, 2000), lingkungan kerja, karakteristik pekerjaan, hubungan kerja dengan rekan kerja dan atasan (Junita, A., 2012;McShane & Von Glinow, 2008;Talib et al, 2017), kultur pembelajaran organisasional (Junita, 2015), beban kerja dan pengalaman emosional di organisasi (McShane & Von Glinow, 2008), perilaku manajemen dan motivasi (Abbas et al 2018), kompensasi (Sauer & Valet, 2013), otonomi, stress peran (Talib et al, 2017), tingkat konflik dan ambiguitas peran (Acker, 2004;Churiyah, 2011;Faucett et al, 2013;Palomino & Frezatti, 2016;Talib et al, 2017). (Babakus et al, 1999;Shin et al, 2020), tingkat kesehatan fisik pekerja di sector public (Bao & Zhong, 2019), dampak positif pekerjaan terhadap keluarga (work-to-family positive spillover (WFPS) (Tang et al, 2016), kepuasan, komitmen dan kinerja karyawan (Babakus et al, 1999). Kelelahan emosional karyawan juga dapat berdampak pada capaian efektivitas organisasi (Cho & Lee, 2016).…”