The Relationship between Time Personality and Teachers’ Emotional Exhaustion: A Moderated Mediation Model

In the highly interconnected and connected contemporary environment, work connectivity behavior has become an inevitable typical situation for most teachers. Individuals with different time personality traits not only differ in time management, time planning, and multi-tasking tendencies, but also have different time perceptions of the same physical time. However, how individuals with different time personalities affect emotional exhaustion in work connectivity behavior scenarios needs to be further explored. Based on conservation of resource (COR) theory, differences in time personality traits show different degrees of emotional exhaustion through individuals’ work connectivity behavior. Meanwhile, organizational citizenship behavior, as very important extra-role behavior, can positively influence organizational functioning and interpersonal interactions within the organization, and based on attribution theory, individuals with high levels of organizational citizenship behavior would perceive off-time work connectivity behavior as altruistic and pro-organizational behavior. Therefore, this study integrated two theoretical perspectives to explain the effect of time personality on emotional exhaustion, the mediation of work connectivity behavior and the moderating role of organizational citizenship behavior (helping behavior or civic morality dimensions), both of which play a role in predicting emotional exhaustion based on time personality. In this study, the analysis of the valid data obtained from 630 teachers revealed: (1) Time personality has a positive significant effect on emotional exhaustion. (2) Work connectivity behavior mediates the relationship between time personality and emotional exhaustion. (3) Two dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior, helping behavior and civic morality, inversely moderate the relationship between work connectivity behavior and emotional exhaustion and the mechanism by which time personality positively facilitates emotional exhaustion through the mediation of work connectivity behavior. What is more, the study discusses the findings on the effects of time personality on emotional exhaustion and suggests its practical implications.