Recovery Experiences Protect Emotionally Exhausted White-Collar Workers from Gaming Addiction

Meng Xuan Zhang, Long W. Lam and Anise M. S. Wu ()
Additional contact information
Meng Xuan Zhang: Department of Medical Humanities, School of Humanities, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Long W. Lam: Department of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China
Anise M. S. Wu: Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Institute of Collaborative Innovation, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 19, 1-11

Abstract: Gaming addiction and its negative consequences have attracted public concern, but relatively little is known regarding its impact on adult workers. This study aims to test the association between gaming addiction and emotional exhaustion as well as the protective effect of recovery experiences on such an association among white-collar workers. We recruited 205 working adults (female = 58%) who voluntarily completed an online questionnaire. The results showed that male and younger workers were more vulnerable to gaming addiction. Emotional exhaustion was significantly and positively associated, while two (i.e., relaxation and control) of the four recovery experiences were negatively correlated with gaming addiction. Control experience had an indirect effect on gaming addiction via emotional exhaustion. Moreover, relaxation experience buffered the risk effect of emotional exhaustion on gaming addiction so that the effect is less pronounced at high levels of relaxation. Interventions are suggested to raise workers’ awareness of effective recovery experiences (especially for control and relaxation) and to facilitate their recovery opportunities.

Keywords: gaming addiction; emotional exhaustion; recovery experiences; relaxation; Chinese workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/19/12543/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/19/12543/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:19:p:12543-:d:931222

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().