Challenge job demands and job resources to university teacher well-being: the mediation of teacher efficacy

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the associations between challenge job demands, job resources, emotional exhaustion and work engagement, and examined the mediation effect of teacher efficacy as a personal resource in the job demands-resources model. The results of a questionnaire survey of 2758 university teachers from 25 universities in mainland China indicated that challenge job demands were positively related to emotional exhaustion and negatively related to work engagement. Job resources were positively related to work engagement and negatively related to emotional exhaustion. Teacher efficacy mediated the effect of challenge job demands and job resources on work engagement. These results have implications for understanding different types of job demands and improving university teachers’ well-being, and these implications are identified in this paper.

KEYWORDS:

• Challenge job demands
• job resources
• emotional exhaustion
• work engagement
• teacher efficacy
• faculty well-being

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China under grant number 18BYY095, Young Scholars Program of Shandong University, and General Research Fund of Hong Kong SAR under grant number CUHK 14618118.