From Hostile Feedback to Withdrawal: Emotional Exhaustion as a Barrier to Social Media Misinformation Correction

User-driven misinformation correction is essential for sustaining the integrity of democratic discourse on social media, yet the emotional costs that discourage engagement remain understudied. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this study examines how the emotional tone of other users’ feedback affects correctors’ emotional exhaustion and subsequent willingness to engage in future corrections in a social media environment. In a cross-national experiment ( N = 2,001) across Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, and Poland, utilizing a single-factor, four-level between-subjects design, participants corrected misinformation and received feedback varying in valence and arousal. Results show that angry, high-arousal feedback uniquely depletes emotional resources, producing higher exhaustion than civil disapproval or positive feedback. This indicates that critical feedback does not inherently exhaust correctors, but it is the hostile tone, not the negativity itself, that drives depletion. Emotional exhaustion, in turn, predicts avoidance of future corrective engagement. This exhaustion-driven withdrawal is amplified rather than buffered by correction confidence, suggesting that individual motivation alone is insufficient in hostile environments. These findings highlight emotional exhaustion as a key psychological constraint on citizen-led fact-checking and suggest that platform-level moderation targeting hostile comments is critical to protect the emotional resources required for a resilient democratic debate in digital environments.