Exhaustion and emotional demands in China: A large-scale investigation across occupations

Abstract

As the Chinese economy moves toward a market-based model, employees are likely to face more emotional demands and exhaustion at work. However, there are some unique aspects to the emotional demands of work in the Chinese cultural context. We investigate emotional demands and exhaustion in China with a large-scale sample across the six major occupations identified by the Holland classification system. Results show that incumbents of social and enterprising jobs face higher emotional demands. Unexpectedly, exhaustion differs significantly between conventional and other types of jobs. Building on the Job Demand-Resources (JD-R) model, job crafting and the cultural context, we propose that the nonlinear relationship of emotional demands and exhaustion exists only when emotional intelligence is low. Our study may inform practitioners and policy makers in Chinese enterprises about emotional demands and exhaustion for various occupations and the importance of selection and training programs in emotional intelligence.