TY - JOUR
T1 - Health-Protective Instinct and Emotional Exhaustion
T2 - The Why and When Perceived COVID-19 Infectability Emotionally Drains Frontline Employees During a Pandemic
AU - Antwi, Collins Opoku
AU - Ntim, Seth Yeboah
AU - Zhang, Jianzhen
AU - Asante, Eric Adom
AU - Darko, Adjei Peter
AU - Ren, Jun
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 American Psychological Association
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Frontline employees (FLEs) faced double exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic—exposure to infection contagion and potential job loss. Such situations take an enormous emotional toll on FLEs. Responding to the heightened FLEs’ emotional toll during the pandemic, we integrated the motivational psychologies of disease avoidance and conservation of resource theory to develop and empirically test a theoreticalmodel that advances that hotel FLEs’ perceived COVID-19 infectability undermines their emotional self-regulation at work, which then leads to emotional exhaustion. In a time-lagged field study (N = 454), we found robust evidence for our model. Specifically, we found that FLEs’ perceived COVID-19 infectability relates positively to surface acting and emotional exhaustion but negatively to deep acting. Surface and deep acting transmit perceived COVID-19 infectability’s effect on emotional exhaustion. Perceived COVID-19 infectability’s direct and indirect effects on emotional exhaustion via surface acting are buffered by FLEs’ dispositional mindfulness. In sum, our findings show that hotel FLEs’ perceived pathogen infectability constitutes a hindrance stressor that impoverishes their service behaviors and emotional vitality at work during a pandemic, and these effects can be mitigated by FLEs’ dispositional mindfulness. Therefore, mindfulness training as part of role training will benefit hotel FLEs with high perceived pathogen infectability to have a healthy and productive lives.
AB - Frontline employees (FLEs) faced double exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic—exposure to infection contagion and potential job loss. Such situations take an enormous emotional toll on FLEs. Responding to the heightened FLEs’ emotional toll during the pandemic, we integrated the motivational psychologies of disease avoidance and conservation of resource theory to develop and empirically test a theoreticalmodel that advances that hotel FLEs’ perceived COVID-19 infectability undermines their emotional self-regulation at work, which then leads to emotional exhaustion. In a time-lagged field study (N = 454), we found robust evidence for our model. Specifically, we found that FLEs’ perceived COVID-19 infectability relates positively to surface acting and emotional exhaustion but negatively to deep acting. Surface and deep acting transmit perceived COVID-19 infectability’s effect on emotional exhaustion. Perceived COVID-19 infectability’s direct and indirect effects on emotional exhaustion via surface acting are buffered by FLEs’ dispositional mindfulness. In sum, our findings show that hotel FLEs’ perceived pathogen infectability constitutes a hindrance stressor that impoverishes their service behaviors and emotional vitality at work during a pandemic, and these effects can be mitigated by FLEs’ dispositional mindfulness. Therefore, mindfulness training as part of role training will benefit hotel FLEs with high perceived pathogen infectability to have a healthy and productive lives.
KW - deep and surface acting
KW - dispositional mindfulness
KW - emotional exhaustion
KW - frontline employees
KW - perceived COVID-19 infectability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85192740529&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/str0000326
DO - 10.1037/str0000326
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85192740529
SN - 1072-5245
JO - International Journal of Stress Management
JF - International Journal of Stress Management
ER -