The Impact of Chinese Entrepreneurs' Emotional Labor and Work Pressure on Export Profitability: Evidence From China

Abstract

Background Since China's economic reform and opening up, exports have increased significantly. However, coronavirus disease will seriously affect the global economy in 2019; Global market demand is weak. How to stabilize the export intensive profit margin and expand the export extensive profit margin is an urgent problem related to China's export stability and the construction of a major trading country. Chinese entrepreneurs shoulder an arduous mission in this regard. Entrepreneurs' emotional labor and work pressure in this regard will not only damage personal health and occupational well-being, but also have a negative impact on the organization, such as reduced job performance and increased turnover intention. Research objects and methods This study uses two-stage Heckman model and system generated moment method to investigate the impact of Chinese entrepreneurs' work emotion, labor and work pressure on export profit margin. This paper uses symptom checklist 90 (SCL-90) to investigate the psychological state of entrepreneurs. Result The experimental data showed that taking the emotion group as the independent variable, the fluency, novelty and harmfulness of MCT were analyzed by one-way multivariate analysis of variance, box's M = 68.30, P < 0.001. The result shows that the covariance matrix of each dependent variable is non-homogeneous, and the data is not suitable for multivariate analysis of variance. Therefore, taking the emotion grouping as the independent variable, the fluency, novelty and harmfulness of MCT were analyzed by one-way ANOVA. Specifically, the main effect of emotion on MCT fluency was significant, f (2, 99) = 14.80, P < 0.0001, η 2p=0.23. Post hoc comparison showed that (Bonferroni) anger group (M = 8.94, SD = 4.77) was higher than sadness group (M = 6.32, SD = 2.40, P = 0.005, Cohen'sd = 0.69) and neutral emotion group (M = 4.56, SD = 2.23, P < 0.001, Cohen'sd = 1.18). There was no significant difference between sadness group and neutral emotion group (P = 0.096). The main effect of emotion on MCT novelty was significant, f (2, 99) = 15.83, P < 0.0001, η 2p=0.24. Post hoc comparison showed that anger group (M = 9.79, SD = 7.73) was higher than sadness group (M = 4.68, SD = 4.08, P < 0.001, Cohen'sd = 0.83) and neutral emotion group (M = 2.91, SD = 2.43, P < 0.001, Cohen'sd = 1.20). There was no difference between sadness group and neutral emotion group (P = 0.504) (see Figure 2b). The main effect of emotion on MCT injury was significant, f (2, 99) = 4.01, P = 0.021, η 2p=0.08. Post hoc comparison showed that anger group (M = 2.91, SD = 0.27) was higher than sadness group (M = 2.65, SD = 0.44, P = 0.051, Cohen'sd = 0.71) and neutral emotion group (M = 2.65, SD = 0.53, P = 0.044, Cohen'sd = 0.62). There was no significant difference between sadness group and neutral emotion group (P = 1.00). The above results show that the positive factors of entrepreneurs' emotional labor help to improve the export profit margin, and play a greater role in promoting the growth of China's export intensive profit margin through the local market effect and the rationalization effect of industrial structure. It plays a limited role in promoting China's extensive export through factor allocation effect, technological innovation effect, industrial agglomeration effect and industrial structure upgrading effect. Among them, enterprise entrepreneurship plays a greater role in improving China's export intensive profit margin, and innovation and entrepreneurship plays a greater role in improving China's export extended profit margin. This applies to China's central and eastern regions, processing and general trade, labor-intensive and capital technology intensive enterprises, as well as private and state-owned enterprises. Entrepreneurship has promoted the marginal growth of export intensive, processing trade, labor-intensive enterprises and private enterprises in the central region; In contrast, it has contributed to the broader export profit growth of the eastern region, general trade, capital and technology intensive enterprises and state-owned enterprises. The positive factors of enterprise emotional labor have a greater impact on export intensive marginal, processing trade, labor-intensive enterprises and private enterprises in Central China than innovation and entrepreneurship. Conclusion China should actively cultivate, encourage and promote entrepreneurship, especially pay attention to the role of emotional labor spirit; At the same time, we should pay more attention to the cultivation of innovation and entrepreneurship. The western region should actively cultivate and encourage entrepreneurship in infrastructure construction, rule of law construction, platform construction and service provision, so as to promote the growth of export intensive profits and extensive profits. The central region, processing trade, labor-intensive enterprises and private enterprises should make full use of government policies, rely on government services, cultivate and carry forward the spirit of innovation based on the market environment, improve the vitality and quality of innovation, enrich the varieties of export products, open up new export markets and improve the export profit margin. This paper provides enlightenment for other developing countries to formulate scientific and reasonable trade policies based on entrepreneurship. Acknowledgements Supported by projects grant from National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.71764018), Social Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (Grant No.21JL08D), Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of Jiangxi Province (Grant No.JJ21212), Postgraduate Innovation Special Foundation of Jiangxi Province (Grant No.YC2021-S809), and Postgraduate Innovation Foundation of Nanchang Institute of Technology (Grant No.YJSCX202105).