The effect of airline service major students’ employment stress on learned helplessness and employment preparation behavior: a moderated mediation model of resilience

Abstract

Introduction. Employment stress among airline service major students is very high, because airlines have not been recruiting during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to high learned helplessness and less employment preparation behavior among students. Thus, the purpose of this study was to verify the effect of resilience, one of the positive psychological variables that decrease the negative mutual influence between learned helplessness and employment preparation behavior. Samples and methods. The participants in this study were 312 airline service major students from four universities in South Korea. Data were collected from junior students who were in their third year of university (64.7%) and senior students who were in their fourth year of university (35.3%) in South Korea. For analysis, this study used SPSS Win.25.0 and PROCESS macro for SPSS 3.5 programs to conduct the frequency test for the demographic information, reliability test, correlation test, and moderated mediation effect analysis. Results. First, employment preparation behavior had a negative correlation with employment stress (r = -.497, p<.01) and learned helplessness (r = -.361, p<.01), as well as a positive association with resilience (r = .484, p < .01). Second, the conditional indirect effects of resilience on the relationship between employment stress and employment preparation behavior through learned helplessness were significant (p < .001) when the resilience value was low (M-1 SD), average (M), or high (M+1 SD). Therefore, the moderated mediation effect of resilience was verified. Practical significance. This study found that airline service major students with high resilience have increased employment preparation behavior. Given the results of this study, students’ resilience should be developed and strengthened to reduce or overcome students’ stress and learned helplessness during the COVID-19 pandemic.