Associations of work- and personal-life-related techno-stressors with emotional exhaustion, sickness absenteeism, and turnover intentions in public administration

Digital technology is increasingly embedded in our professional lives, exposing us to various techno-stressors. Based on the Stressor-Strain-Outcome (SSO) model, we developed a holistic perspective on technostress and a research model to investigate how work-related and personal-life-related techno-stressors among employees in public administration organizations impact emotional exhaustion, sickness absenteeism, and turnover intentions. Furthermore, we investigated how psychological resilience moderates the relationship between work-related and personal-life-related techno-stressors and emotional exhaustion. The study was conducted in public administration organizations in Slovenia and included 1191 employees in the study sample. We used structural equation modeling to test the proposed research model. We found that some work-related techno-stressors significantly associated with employees emotional exhaustion. Among the personal-life-related techno-stressors, information overload demonstrated positive association with emotional exhaustion. In addition, emotional exhaustion was positively related to sickness absenteeism and turnover intention. Although no direct association between techno-stressors and sickness absenteeism was observed, our findings demonstrate that techno-stressors are indirectly linked to sickness absenteeism via emotional exhaustion. This study thus provides the first known empirical evidence of the indirect associations between techno-stressors and sickness absenteeism through emotional exhaustion, thereby filling a notable research gap.