The Impact of Terrorism-induced Fear on Job Attitudes and Absenteeism Following a National Traumatic Event: Evidence from Pakistan

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of terrorism-induced fear on employee job attitudes and absenteeism in the weeks following the Army Public School attack in Peshawar, Pakistan. The paper is based on questionnaire data collected from 204 faculty members of public sector universities in Peshawar using snowball sampling technique. We applied partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the entire impact path and found substantial support for our hypotheses. The results suggest that fear of terrorism affects absenteeism directly, as well as indirectly via job attitudes. Further, perceived organizational support is found to attenuate the negative relationship between fear of terrorism and job attitudes. Very few studies have examined the impact of societal variables such as national traumatic events on jobrelated outcomes.

Keywords

• Terrorism, Fear, Job attitudes, Absenteeism, Perceived organizational support, Pakistan