Unpacking the Interplay between Psychological Capital and Well-being in Entrepreneurs: The Mediating Role of Burnout through Conservation of Resources Theory

Amal Abdulmajeed Qassim¹Sarfraz Ali Malak^2*

• ¹Department of Management, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Tabuk, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia
• ²University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan

Despite growing research on exploring positive psychological aspects of entrepreneurs' wellbeing, insufficient studies exist in the context of entrepreneurs in Sindh, Pakistan. The role of burnout as a mediator in the relationship between PsyCap and psychological well-being (PWB), from the perspective of the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, is underexplored. This study has adopted quantitative methods and a survey technique was used to gather crosssectional data from entrepreneurs of Sindh Province, Pakistan. A questionnaire from past relevant studies has been used to collect responses from a sample of 309 respondents through a simple random sampling technique. The data were analyzed through Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) in Smart-PLS version 4. The results show that PsyCapcorrelates positively to PWB and negatively to burnout, in a significant way. In addition, findings also reveal that burnout mediates the interplay between PsyCap and PWB. This suggests that increased burnout results in lower positive psychological aspects that lead to the lower psychological well-being of entrepreneurs; however, increased PsyCap (hope, optimism, resilience and self-efficacy) buffers the burnout and maintains the entrepreneurs' flourishing and healthy psychological well-being. Hence, the present study outcomes empirically validate COR theory in the context of entrepreneurship.