ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1546608
How Openness to experience Drives R&D staff's Innovative Behavior: A Nonlinear Mediation and Moderation Perspective on Flow Experience and Emotional Intelligence
Provisionally accepted
Yanqiong Liu*
Zhaogang Sun- Zhengzhou University of Aeronautics, Zhengzhou, China
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Openness to experience is widely recognized as a driver of innovation, yet how flow experience mediates this relationship and whether emotional intelligence (EI) moderates it remain underexplored. This study investigates the nonlinear mediating role of flow between openness and innovation behavior, and EI' s moderating effect, using quantitative data from 475 R&D professionals(male, 75.16%; female, 24.84%). Results reveal a curvilinear mediation: moderate flow enhances innovation, but excessive flow diminishes it. EI buffers this relationship, enabling sustained innovation under high flow intensity. The findings highlight the need to manage flow dynamics and underscore EI as a critical factor for fostering innovation in R&D contexts, offering practical insights for organizational creativity management.
Keywords: Openness, Innovation behavior, flow experience, Emotional Intelligence, Nonlinear Mediation
Received: 07 Mar 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu and Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yanqiong Liu, Zhengzhou University of Aeronautics, Zhengzhou, China
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