How COVID-19 Perceived Risk Causes Turnover Intention Among Chinese Flight Attendants: A Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

Qishan Chen,1,2 Yonghsuan Li,1,2 Ruochun Wang,1,2 Ruixing Shen1,2 1Philosophy and Social Science Laboratory of Reading and Development in Children and Adolescents (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China; 2School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Qishan Chen, Email [email protected]: This study examined the influencing mechanism and boundary conditions underlying the relation between COVID-19 perceived risk and flight attendants’ turnover intention by investigating the mediating role of job insecurity and the moderating effect of job crafting.Methods: A two-wave survey was conducted with 240 Chinese flight attendants. We used structural equation modeling to test the moderated mediation model.Results: The results indicated that perceived risk of COVID-19 positively affected flight attendants’ job insecurity and turnover intention. Moreover, job insecurity plays a fully mediating role in the relationship between perceived risk and turnover intention. Furthermore, the mediating role of job insecurity was moderated by job crafting; for higher levels of job crafting (opposed to low), the effect of job insecurity on turnover intention was significantly weaker.Conclusion: Our findings indicate that dissipating job insecurity and increasing job crafting behavior are critical to employees’ work-related attitudes and behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.Keywords: COVID-19 perceived risk, job insecurity, job crafting, turnover intention, flight attendants

Keywords

• covid-19 perceived risk
• job insecurity
• job crafting
• turnover intention
• flight attendants