Consequences of job insecurity for hospitality workers amid COVID-19 pandemic: does social support help?

ABSTRACT

Using a time-lagged field survey, the current study examined the psycho-economic effects of job insecurity among hospitality workers during the recent pandemic of COVID-19. The study also examined social support as a buffering agent against the harmful effects of job insecurity. Data were collected from employees (N = 272) working in numerous hotels, restaurants, and travel agencies across Pakistan. Hierarchical moderated regression analysis was used to test the study’s hypotheses. The results suggested that job insecurity was negatively related to self-esteem and positively related to economic deprivation. In addition, social support significantly moderated the effects of job insecurity on mental health, self-esteem, economic self-efficacy and life satisfaction such that the negative effects of job insecurity were stronger when social support was low. The results for economic deprivation, however, were contrary to the expectations, whereby job insecurity had a strong positive effect on economic deprivation in case of high social support.

目前的研究使用了一个时间滞后的实地调查，考察了在最近流行的COVID-19期间，酒店员工工作不安全感的心理经济影响. 这项研究还考察了社会支持作为缓冲剂对抗工作不安全的有害影响. 数据收集自在巴基斯坦各地众多酒店、餐厅和旅行社工作的员工（N=272）. 分层缓和回归分析被用来检验研究的假设. 结果表明，工作不安全感与自尊呈负相关，与经济剥夺呈正相关. 此外，社会支持显著地调节了工作不安全感对心理健康、自尊、经济自我效能感和生活满意度的影响，当社会支持较低时，工作不安全感的负效应更强. 然而，经济剥夺的结果与预期相反，即在高社会支持的情况下，工作不安全感对经济剥夺有强烈的积极影响.

KEYWORDS:

• Job insecurity
• economic self-efficacy
• economic deprivation
• mental health
• self-esteem
• life satisfaction
• social support

Declaration of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest

Ethics approval

The ethics approval was obtained from the departmental ethics committee at FAST School of Management, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, PAKISTAN.