Organizational Support and Emotional Exhaustion Among Elementary and Secondary School Teachers

Jul 16, 2026

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Study based on conservation of resources theory examines how organizational support relates to emotional exhaustion among 3,519 Chinese elementary and secondary school teachers. Work meaningfulness mediates the relationship, and core self-evaluation moderates the first-stage and second-stage mediation path. Results show organizational support negatively predicts emotional exhaustion after controlling for age and grade, informing interventions through increasing work meaningfulness and enhancing core self-evaluation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

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Organizational support and emotional exhaustion among elementary and secondary school teachers: roles of work meaningfulness and core self-evaluation Xinwei Hong1 · Lulu Xue1 · Liping Zhang1 · Yue Ma1 · Lipeng Chen1 Accepted: 23 March 2025 / Published online: 31 March 2025 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2025 Abstract Based on the conservation of resources theory resource conservation theory, the aim of this study was to explore the relationship between organizational support and emotional exhaustion and the mediating role of work meaningfulness and the moderating role of core self-evaluation among elementary and secondary school teachers. A total of 3519 Chinese elementary and secondary school teachers were invited to complete a questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, t-test, and correlation analysis were demonstrated using SPSS22.0 and the hypothesis model was tested by model 4 and model 59 of the PROCESS macro. The results showed that organizational support negatively predicted emotional exhaustion after controlling for age and grade; work meaningfulness partially mediated the relationship between organizational support and emotional exhaustion; and core self-evaluation moderated the first and second half of the mediation process “organizational support → work meaningfulness → emotional exhaustion.” The findings not only help understand the relationship between organizational support and emotional exhaustion and its underlying mechanisms from the perspectives of positive psychology and conservation of resources theory but also suggest that emotional exhaustion interventions for elementary and secondary school teachers should include promoting work meaningfulness and enhancing core self-evaluation. Keywords Organizational support · Work meaningfulness · Core self-evaluation · Emotional exhaustion · Elementary and secondary school teachers Introduction The teaching profession is considered one of the highestrisk professions worldwide (Beutel et al., 2023). Elementary and secondary school teachers are often faced with intense workloads and work pressures that cause them to experience increasing levels of emotional exhaustion, which not only affects their job satisfaction (Skaalvik, 2023), turnover intention (Lee et al., 2021), and so on, but also affects their students’ mental health and academic performance (Klusmann et al., 2022) . Emotional exhaustion, the most visible manifestation and core trait of burnout is the feeling of 􀀍 Lipeng Chen[chenlipeng2019@126.com](chenlipeng2019@126.com) 1 Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun St, Haidian District, Beijing 100872, P. R. China extreme chronic fatigue caused by continuous exposure to demanding working conditions and diminished emotional resources (Klusmann et al., 2023) . In the Chinese education system, Confucian educational ideology, an emphasis on student achieve

Jul 16, 2026

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