Linking effort-reward imbalance to work engagement: Job crafting as a mediator and overcommitment as a moderator among rural teachers

While prior studies have established work engagement as a crucial antecedent to teacher effectiveness, there has been insufficient exploration of the process through which resource-related stress, particularly Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI), depletes this vital psychological state. This study draws on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory to build an integrative model that outlines how ERI affects rural teachers' work engagement via their job crafting strategies, and how this process is conditional on their level of overcommitment. Results from a cross-sectional field study involving 482 rural teachers revealed that ERI was negatively associated with work engagement. This relationship was dually mediated by a suppression of promotion-focused job crafting and an enhancement of prevention-focused job crafting. Furthermore, the indirect effects were moderated by overcommitment, such that they were stronger for teachers with low overcommitment and non-significant for those with high overcommitment. Overall, this study extends theory by demonstrating how rural teachers engage in resource conservation and loss spirals under conditions of ERI, providing novel insights into the behavioral and dispositional mechanisms that shape engagement in under-resourced contexts.