How and when does hospitality employees’ core beliefs challenge foster their proactive coping for technostress?: Examining the roles of promotion focus, job insecurity, and technostress

Abstract

Disruptions to where hospitality work is performed has been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 spread urged hospitality organizations to apply digital technologies for undertaking work from home. Nevertheless, little is understood about how hospitality employees cope with stress linked with the use of digital technologies. The aim of this study is to examine how hospitality employees' core beliefs challenge can foster their proactive coping for technostress in the forms of positive reinterpretation and information technology (IT) control. The data were obtained from 427 employees in 28 hotels that applied digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data were processed through multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM). The results revealed that hospitality employees' core beliefs challenge was positively associated with positive reinterpretation and IT control. Promotion focus served as a mediation mechanism for such positive associations. The results provided support for the role of job insecurity as a moderator to attenuate the positive effects of promotion focus on both positive reinterpretation and IT control. While technostress enhanced the positive effect of promotion focus on positive reinterpretation, it demonstrated a non-significant moderating effect on the positive association of promotion focus with IT control. The findings advance the understanding of the roles of core beliefs challenge and promotion focus in leveraging proactive coping for technostress, as well as provide practical implications for hospitality managers to foster employees’ proactive coping for technostress while employees are engaging with digital technologies to work from home during a crisis such as COVID-19 pandemic.