Emotional Labor and Job Burnout of the Construction Project Managers: The Mediating Effect of Work-to-Family Conflict

Construction project managers (CPMs) experience a great deal of stress and encounter the problem of job burnout. Job burnout of CPMs has been proved to cause health problems, turnover intention, and low job performance. Previous studies have focused on the relationship between task stressors and job burnout of CPMs. While the interpersonal stress also influences the job burnout. CPMs need to conduct emotional labor (surface acting) when have interpersonal interaction with stakeholders and team members. The emotional labor may influence the workto-family conflict of CPMs and lead to job burnout. Therefore, this study aims to explore how surface acting and work-to-family conflict influence job burnout of CPMs. Data collected from 163 CPMs in China were analyzed by partial-least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to verify the theoretical hypotheses. The results suggest that both surface acting and workto-family conflict have positive effects on job burnout. Besides, the work-to-family conflict mediates the relationship between surface acting and job burnout. This study extends emotional labor in the project context and explores the mediating effect of work-to-family conflict between emotional labor and job burnout of CPMs. This study also provides some practice suggestions on decreasing job burnout of CPMs.