ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
The relationship between emotional exhaustion and job embeddedness in nurses: the mediating role of decent work perception and the moderating role of job crafting
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shanxi Bethune Hospital, Taiyuan, China
- 2Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China
- 3Huazhong University of Science and Technology Tongji Medical College Tongji Hospital, Wuhan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objectives: Nurse turnover is a global challenge facing healthcare systems, severely impacting the stability of nursing teams and the quality of care. Job embeddedness is a key predictor of nurse retention. This study aims to explore the relationship between nurses' emotional exhaustion and job embeddedness and to analyze the mediating and moderating roles of decent work perception and job crafting in this relationship. Methods: This was a multicenter cross-sectional study. From February to March 2025, an online questionnaire was administered to 653 nurses from three general hospitals in Shanxi Province, China, using convenience sampling. The questionnaire consisted of the Demographic Information Questionnaire, Emotional Exhaustion Scale, Decent Work Perception Scale, Job Crafting Scale, and Job Embeddedness Scale. The mediating and moderating effects were tested via the PROCESS Macro 4.1 (Model 4 and Model 5) of SPSS 27.0. Results: There was a significant negative correlation between nurses' emotional exhaustion and job embeddedness (p < 0.001). Decent work perception played a partial mediating role between emotional exhaustion and job embeddedness, accounting for 44.1% of the total effect. In addition, job crafting positively moderated the effect of emotional exhaustion on job embeddedness. Conclusions: Based on the results of this study, nursing managers should develop and adopt comprehensive and effective intervention strategies to reduce nurses' emotional exhaustion, stimulate their level of decent work perception and job crafting to improve their job embeddedness, and ultimately stabilize the nursing workforce.
Keywords: Nurses, Emotional exhaustion, Job embeddedness, Decent work, job crafting cross-sectional studies
Received: 03 Aug 2025; Accepted: 24 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xin, Xin, Bian, Li and Niu. 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:
Wanling Li, 3049194186@qq.com
Jinyan Niu, 18834896110@163.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.