Perceived stress and life satisfaction during COVID-19 pandemic: the mediating role of social adaptation and the moderating role of emotional resilience

ABSTRACT

The present study mainly focused on college students during the COVID-19 outbreak and aimed to develop and examine a moderated mediation model between perceived stress and life satisfaction, with social adaptation during COVID-19 as a mediator, and emotional resilience as a moderator. A sample of 1032 college students participated in this study and completed questionnaires regarding perceived stress, social adaptation during COVID-19, emotional resilience, and life satisfaction. Findings indicated that 1) social adaptation during COVID-19 partially mediated the association between perceived stress and life satisfaction; and 2) emotional resilience moderated the relationship between perceived stress and social adaptation during COVID-19 as well as perceived stress and life satisfaction. These two relationships became stronger for college students with lower levels of emotional resilience. The results were discussed to illuminate the mechanism in relation to theoretical and practical implication for improving college students’ life satisfaction during the period of the COVID-19 outbreak.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 pandemic
• perceived stress
• life satisfaction
• social adaptation
• emotional resilience

Disclosure statement

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

Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request https://pan.baidu.com/s/1THpP5xwoOxjiykRO1TxTHA?pwd=886s.

Additional information

Funding

Science and Technology Research Project of Jiangxi’ Department of Education [GJJ200306], Jiangxi’ Key Research Base Project of Humanities and Social Sciences [JD20068].