Effort-reward imbalance and emotional exhaustion among border-region physical education teachers: the roles of meaningful work and social support.

IF 3.8 3区心理学 Q2 PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Frontiers in Psychology Pub Date : 2026-10-05 eCollection Date: 2026-01-01 DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1883202

Yintu Bao, Zhaohua Sun, Hongbin Yue, Boya Dong, Changliang Yan

{"title":"Effort-reward imbalance and emotional exhaustion among border-region physical education teachers: the roles of meaningful work and social support.","authors":"Yintu Bao, Zhaohua Sun, Hongbin Yue, Boya Dong, Changliang Yan","doi":"10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1883202","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Introduction: Emotional exhaustion has become a prevalent psychological concern among teachers working in high-demand educational environments. Drawing upon effort-reward imbalance (ERI) theory and conservation of resources theory, this study examined the relationship between ERI and emotional exhaustion among teachers working in border regions of China, with meaningful work as a mediator and social support as a moderator.Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 483 primary and secondary school physical education teachers. Data were analyzed using PROCESS Models 4 and 14 with 5,000 bootstrap resamples.Results: The results indicated that ERI was positively associated with emotional exhaustion. Meaningful work accounted for a significant indirect association between ERI and emotional exhaustion. In addition, social support moderated the association between meaningful work and emotional exhaustion, such that the positive association was weaker at higher levels of social support. The conditional indirect association between ERI and emotional exhaustion through meaningful work was also smaller at higher levels of social support.Discussion: These findings highlight the complex psychological role of meaningful work under chronically demanding work conditions and emphasize the importance of supportive school environments for maintaining teachers' psychological well-being.","PeriodicalId":12525,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Psychology","volume":"17 ","pages":"1883202"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8000,"publicationDate":"2026-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13677827/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Frontiers in Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1883202","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2026/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Introduction: Emotional exhaustion has become a prevalent psychological concern among teachers working in high-demand educational environments. Drawing upon effort-reward imbalance (ERI) theory and conservation of resources theory, this study examined the relationship between ERI and emotional exhaustion among teachers working in border regions of China, with meaningful work as a mediator and social support as a moderator.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 483 primary and secondary school physical education teachers. Data were analyzed using PROCESS Models 4 and 14 with 5,000 bootstrap resamples.

Results: The results indicated that ERI was positively associated with emotional exhaustion. Meaningful work accounted for a significant indirect association between ERI and emotional exhaustion. In addition, social support moderated the association between meaningful work and emotional exhaustion, such that the positive association was weaker at higher levels of social support. The conditional indirect association between ERI and emotional exhaustion through meaningful work was also smaller at higher levels of social support.

Discussion: These findings highlight the complex psychological role of meaningful work under chronically demanding work conditions and emphasize the importance of supportive school environments for maintaining teachers' psychological well-being.

查看原文本刊更多论文

边境地区体育教师努力-回报失衡与情绪耗竭：有意义工作与社会支持的作用。

导读：在高要求的教育环境中，情绪衰竭已经成为教师普遍关注的心理问题。本研究运用努力-报酬不平衡理论和资源保护理论，考察了边境地区教师的努力-报酬不平衡与情绪耗竭之间的关系，其中有意义的工作是中介，社会支持是调节。方法：对483名中小学体育教师进行横断面调查。使用PROCESS Models 4和14对5000个bootstrap样本进行数据分析。结果：ERI与情绪耗竭呈正相关。有意义的工作在ERI和情绪耗竭之间具有显著的间接关联。此外，社会支持调节了有意义工作与情绪耗竭之间的关系，即社会支持水平越高，这种正相关越弱。在较高的社会支持水平上，ERI与通过有意义工作产生的情绪耗竭之间的条件间接关联也较小。讨论：这些发现强调了在长期苛刻的工作条件下，有意义的工作的复杂心理作用，并强调了支持性学校环境对维持教师心理健康的重要性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Frontiers in Psychology PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-

CiteScore

5.30

自引率

13.20%

发文量

7396

审稿时长

14 weeks

期刊介绍： Frontiers in Psychology is the largest journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across the psychological sciences, from clinical research to cognitive science, from perception to consciousness, from imaging studies to human factors, and from animal cognition to social psychology. Field Chief Editor Axel Cleeremans at the Free University of Brussels is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international researchers. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers, academics, clinicians and the public worldwide. The journal publishes the best research across the entire field of psychology. Today, psychological science is becoming increasingly important at all levels of society, from the treatment of clinical disorders to our basic understanding of how the mind works. It is highly interdisciplinary, borrowing questions from philosophy, methods from neuroscience and insights from clinical practice - all in the goal of furthering our grasp of human nature and society, as well as our ability to develop new intervention methods.