Which factors are associated with the chefs' perception of stress at the beginning of COVID-19 lockdown?

Abstract

With the theoretical starting point of the transactional stress model of Lazarus and its further elaboration and operationalization by Levenstein et al. we investigate the following research question: Which factors are associated with the chefs' perception of stress at the beginning of COVID-19 lockdown? With the help of an online survey among 128 Michelin-star chefs and 159 non-Michelin-star chefs in Germany, we provide answers to the research question. Our results show that resilience is the strongest predictor for reducing the chef’s perception of stress. In contrast, financial restrictions due to unemployment or short-time work compensation do not increase the perception of stress. Additionally, self-employment status increases the stress perception. Meanwhile, the assessment of the governmental economic support as insufficient also has a high impact on the stress perception.