Precarious job makes me withdraw? The role of job insecurity and negative affect

Shanting Zheng, Tangli Ding, Hao Chen, Yunhong Wu, Wenjing Cai*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

An expanding “gig” economy has changed the nature of employment; thus, researchers have recently focused on exploring the role of job precariousness in the workplace. However, little research attention has been given to understanding why, how and when job precariousness leads to employees’ negative behavioral outcomes in the service-oriented industry. In the current study, we examined job insecurity as a mediator and employees’ negative affect as a moderator in the relationship between job precariousness and employees’ withdrawal behavior. Using a sample of 472 employees working in Chinese hotels, we found that job precariousness is positively related to employees’ withdrawal behavior by increasing their job insecurity. Moreover, this mediating relationship is conditional on the moderator variable of employees’ negative affect for the path from job insecurity to withdrawal behavior. The importance of these findings for understanding the un-desirable behavior outcomes of job precariousness is discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Article number12999
Pages (from-to)1-15
Number of pages15
JournalInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Volume18
Issue number24
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Dec 2021

Bibliographical note

Special Issue: Job Insecurity and Precarious Employment as Psychosocial Risk Factors in Contemporary Society.

Funding Information:
Funding: This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 72002211) and the USTC Research Funds of the Double First-Class Initiative (grant number YD2160002010).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Keywords

  • Job insecurity
  • Job precariousness
  • Negative affect
  • Withdrawal behavior

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