Emotional Exhaustion as a Mediator between Emotional Labor and Work-to-Family Conflict

In clinical work, nurses need to pay not only physical and mental labor but also emotional labor. This study recruited 163 nurses from 5 hospitals in China as the research object. Based on COR theory, this study aimed to explore the relationships between nurses’ emotional labor strategies, emotional exhaustion, and work-to-family conflict. Findings show that surface acting is indirectly related to work-to-family conflict via emotional exhaustion. While deep acting was unrelated to emotional exhaustion and work-to-family conflict. The results of this study enrich the literature on emotional labor and provide some suggestions to balance work-family conflict for nurses.

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