Investigating affective dispositions as moderators of relationships between weekend activities and recovery experiences

Abstract

Recovery experiences achieved during a weekend are presumed to be outcomes of weekend activities. However, results examining relationships between them are mixed. In line with models of differential stress responses, we posited that these differences may be accounted for by affective dispositions. We examined three-way interactions between weekend activities (low-effort and work-related) and both positive trait affect (PA) and negative trait affect (NA) on recovery experiences (psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery). Employees from various work sectors (N = 183) responded to online surveys about their weekend. The results demonstrated that recovery experiences, specifically psychological detachment and mastery, depended on interactions between weekend activities and affective dispositions. When PA was high, NA had a detrimental impact on the relationship between both weekend activities and mastery experiences. When PA was low, NA had a detrimental impact on the relationship between low-effort activities and psychological detachment. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. Practitioner pointsPositive and negative affective dispositions need to be considered in combination to understand when certain recovery activities will be related to recovery experiences or not. When PA was high, NA had a detrimental impact on the relationship between both weekend activities and mastery experiences. When PA was low, NA had a detrimental impact on the relationship between low-effort activities and psychological detachment.

Employees’ Weekend Activities and Psychological Well-Being via Job Stress: A Moderated Mediation Role of Recovery Experience

“…Our study contributes to the existing study by identifying recovery experiences as a vital situational variable that can improve the effect of weekend activities. Much previous research has simply explained the degree of recovery as an outcome measure of weekend activities [17,23]. This study, however, expanded on the previous research by identifying the differences of weekend activities' effect for job stress depending on the level of recovery experiences.…”

“…Second, our study found the key mediating mechanism to explain how weekend activities promoted employees' psychological well-being. Several studies have examined how weekend or leisure activities influenced employees' attitude toward their job and life such as job stress, life satisfaction, and recovery experiences [17,22,33,47,48]; however, the relationships among weekend activities, job stress, and psychological well-being have been rarely investigated. In particular, by identifying the substantial mediating role of job stress, this study provides useful insights to understand the key mechanism of how weekend activities facilitate psychological well-being of employees.…”

“…In particular, it was observed that psychological detachment, relaxation, recovery of resources, and psychological stability are not proportional to the quantity of weekend activities but vary according to individual characteristics and the degree of personally perceived recovery experiences [26]. In this respect, this study seeks to broaden the understanding in four areas [16][17][18].…”

“…As a means of coping with job stress, weekend activities and recovery experiences have been attracting public interest, which has fueled a surge of related research [14][15][16][17][18]. However, previous studies on job stress and psychological well-being have addressed the issue from an organizational perspective [19][20][21].…”

An Examination of Athletic Trainers' Occupational Recovery Experiences During Time After Work

“…Compared with previous US-based studies conducted across a range of professions, ATs in our study scored slightly lower in psychological detachment and control but slightly higher in mastery and relaxation than other workers. 14,[28][29][30][31] Collectively, our data indicated that ATs may be better able to engage in leisure or relaxation and learn or take on new challenges than they can psychologically distance themselves from work or display autonomy over their nonwork time. These data are consistent with previous reports 1,7,12 of ATs who perceived that they were constantly in work mode and had little control over their work schedules.…”