Predicting Australian Animal Management Officers’ Professional Quality of Life, Mental Health, and Turnover: A Job Demands-Resources Framework

Animal management officers (AMOs) are responsible for animal regulation and enforcement duties. This understudied profession is likely to be exposed to high job demands that may have detrimental impacts on professional quality of life, leading to psychological distress and heightened intentions to leave. This study used job demands-resources (JD-R) theory and an online survey to explore components of professional quality of life (compassion satisfaction (CS), burnout, secondary traumatic stress (STS)), psychological distress, and intentions to leave the industry in a sample of 133 Australian AMOs. Consistent with the JD-R model, perceived job demands were positively associated with burnout and STS and negatively associated with CS. Job resources, meanwhile, were negatively correlated with burnout and STS and positively correlated with CS. Burnout and STS were strongly positively associated with psychological distress, while CS predicted lower intentions to leave. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that job demands and resources accounted for substantially more variance in wellbeing outcomes (56–60%) than demographic variables (≤ 8%). Conflicting expectations, hassles, and animal work stigma were the strongest predictors of burnout and STS, whereas pro-animal impact and opportunities for development predicted higher CS. These results imply that both global and animal-related job demands and resources have important roles in determining wellbeing in AMOs. They highlight the need to prioritize workplace wellbeing initiatives, with broader implications for enhancing mental health and sustainability across animal-related professions.