AUTHOR=Zhang Xueqi , Yan Fengjuan , Meng Lin 

TITLE=How does ego-depletion affect the reemployment intention of county public sector retirees? The mediating effect of psychological ownership and the moderating effect of social trust

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 16 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1657287

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1657287

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=In recent years, with the increasingly severe situation of population aging in China, it had become one of the important ways to implement the active aging strategy and promote the reemployment of the retired young healthy elderly people. At present, there were quite a number of young public sector workers in China who were still able to work at the county level and were forced to quit their jobs due to retirement. To promote the reemployment of these precious labor resources was of great significance to alleviate the problem of labor shortage in China. In this paper, ego-depletion was divided into three dimensions: cognitive depletion, emotional depletion and behavioral depletion. The influence of various dimensions of ego-depletion on reemployment intention was systematically analyzed. The effect of psychological ownership and social trust in the relationship between ego-depletion and reemployment intention was analyzed. The results showed that: (1) All dimensions of ego-depletion had a negative effect on the reemployment intention of younger public sector retirees. The effects of each dimension were as follows: cognitive depletion > behavioral depletion > emotional depletion; (2) Cognitive depletion and emotional depletion had significant negative effects on psychological ownership; Behavior depletion had no significant effect on psychological ownership. (3) Psychological ownership played a mediating effect in the inhibition of reemployment intention by cognitive depletion and emotional depletion; There was no effect on the effect of behavioral depletion on reemployment intention; (4) Social trust positively moderated the relationship between ego-depletion and psychological ownership; In addition, social trust positively moderated the effects of cognitive depletion and behavioral depletion on reemployment intention, but had no moderating effect on the relationship between emotional depletion and reemployment intention.