Daily Relationships Between Job Insecurity and Emotional Labor Amid COVID-19: Mediation of Ego Depletion and Moderation of Off-Job Control and Work-Related Smartphone Use

Abstract

The economic recession in the service sector during the COVID-19 pandemic has jeopardized service employees’ job security. While the daily fluctuations of perceived job insecurity may have implications for service employees’ emotional labor, the day-to-day relationship between these two variables and their mediating and moderating mechanisms in the pandemic context remain unknown. To fill this gap, our research examined the day-level relationship between job insecurity perceptions, ego depletion, and emotional labor, as well as the moderating effects of overnight off-job control and work-related smartphone use. To assess these relationships, we conducted two daily studies during the COVID-19 pandemic. In study 1 (March–April 2020), 135 service employees responded to morning and evening online surveys for five workdays. In study 2 (June 2022),which administered morning and evening online surveys to 90 flight attendants for fiveworkdays, work-related COVID-19 exposure risk was controlled in the analyses. The results of the two studies demonstrated that on a day when service employees perceived a high level of job insecurity, they felt egodepleted, which, in turn, was associated with decreased deep acting and increased surface acting. Post hoc findings indicated a significant three-way interaction between off-job control, off-job work-related smartphone use, and daily job insecurity, such that the job insecurity–ego depletion–emotional labor was most pronounced when off-job control was low and off-job work-related smartphone use was high.