The Effect of Job Stress and Psychological Burnout on Child-care Teachers’ Turnover Intention: A Moderated Mediation Model of Gratitude

Abstract

Introduction. Child-care teachers’ turnover intention is very high in Korea because of low wage and hard work which cause job stress and psychological burnout. There is need for research to reduce turnover intention using psychological variables such as gratitude. Our purpose in this study was to verify when gratitude affects the mediating effects of psychological exhaustion in the link between job stress and turnover intention of 234 childcare teachers in Korea. Study participants and methods. The participants in this study were 234 child-care teachers from Korea. Among the participants, 78.6% were married and 21.4% were single. The most common age group was 40s with 49.1%, 30s with 23.6%, 20s with 15.0%, and 50s with 12.3%. For analysis, we used SPSS Win.25.0 and PROCESS macro for SPSS 3.5 programs to do descriptive statistics analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and moderated mediation effect analysis. Results. First, turnover intention had a positive correlation with job stress (r = .506, p<.01) and psychological burnout (r = .571, p<.01), and a negative association with gratitude (r = - .339, p < .01). Second, conditional indirect effects of gratitude on the relationship between job stress and turnover intention through psychological burnout were significant (p < .001) when the gratitude value was low (M-1 SD), average (M), or high (M+1 SD). Therefore, the moderated mediation effect of gratitude was verified. Practical significance. This study found out that gratitude of childcare teachers alleviates their turnover intention. This result will be used as a model to reduce the degree of turnover intention by using the gratitude of child-care teachers.