Self-compassion among university students as a personal resource in the job demand-resources model

Abstract

Based on Job Demand Resource Model (JD-R), and Conservation of Resources Theory (COR Theory), self-compassion was set as a personal resource, and how it affected academic burnout, and academic engagement had been investigated. This study was conducted on a sample of 599 university students in South Korea who were expected to have overwhelming study demands during their transition from school to work. A structural equation model was applied to estimate the mediation effect. We found that self-compassion partially mediated the relationship between academic demands and burnout, and fully mediated the relationship between academic demands and engagement. Furthermore, social support was reciprocally related to self-compassion, and both had a positive effect on engagement. Since self-compassion triggered engagement and managed to decrease the effect of academic demands on burnout, we discussed self-compassion’s function as a personal resource.

Keywords:

• Self-compassion
• social support
• academic burnout
• job demand-resource model
• conservation of resource theory
• academic engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea [NRF- 2020S1A5A2A01043871].