Employee mindfulness and proactive coping for technostress in the COVID-19 outbreak: The roles of regulatory foci, technostress, and job insecurity

Abstract

The transition to digital platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic has created technostress to several workers. Our study aims to investigate whether employee mindfulness contributes to their proactive coping for technostress. We built the dataset from 714 employees from service industries during the pandemic. The findings lent credence to the role of prevention focus in mediating the positive link between dispositional mindfulness and proactive coping for technostress as well as the role of promotion focus in mediating the positive relationship between interpersonal mindfulness and proactive coping for technostress. Technostress was found to strengthen the negative association between prevention focus and proactive coping for technostress while job insecurity represented an attenuating effect on such a link. The results further confirmed the attenuating effect of job insecurity on the positive link between promotion focus and proactive coping for technostress. This study adds dispositional and interpersonal mindfulness as crucial personal antecedents to proactive coping for technostress as well as offers insights into mechanisms underlying such relationships.

Keywords: COVID-19; Dispositional mindfulness; Interpersonal mindfulness; Job insecurity; Prevention focus; Proactive coping for technostress; Promotion focus; Technostress.