Health-Protective Instinct and Emotional Exhaustion: The Why and When Perceived COVID-19 Infectability Emotionally Drains Frontline Employees During a Pandemic

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 theoretical model 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.