Teacher burnout poses a significant challenge to educational systems worldwide, yet evidence regarding its psychological predictors remains uneven across cultural contexts. Drawing on Transactional Stress Theory and the Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) model, the present study examined the relative and incremental contributions of demographic characteristics and Big Five personality traits to emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy among Vietnamese primary school teachers. A sample of 305 teachers completed measures of burnout, personality traits, and demographic characteristics. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that demographic variables accounted for limited variance across burnout dimensions. In contrast, Big Five personality traits explained substantial additional variance beyond demographics. Conscientiousness emerged as the only trait consistently associated with all three burnout dimensions, negatively predicting emotional exhaustion and cynicism and positively predicting professional efficacy. Neuroticism was uniquely associated with emotional exhaustion, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness were most relevant for cynicism, and agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience predicted professional efficacy. These findings suggest that while established personality–burnout associations largely replicate in direction within a collectivist educational context, cultural characteristics may influence the relative salience of specific dispositional mechanisms. The study extends dominant burnout frameworks beyond Western settings and highlights the role of personality traits as proximal psychological factors in understanding teacher burnout.
Ta et al. (Fri,) studied this question.