ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicNavigating Emotions at Work: Behavioral Consequences of Positivity and NegativityView all 10 articles
The dual mediating effect of physical exercise on job performance: A conservation of resources perspective
Provisionally accepted
- Chengdu Sport University, Chengdu, China
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Physical exercise has been widely shown to benefit employees' psychological functioning; however, less is known about how these benefits are translated into work-related outcomes. Drawing on Conse rvation of Resources (COR) theory, this study examined whether and how physical exercise influenc es job performance through the mediating roles of positive affect and self-efficacy. A three-wave tim e-lagged survey was conducted among full-time employees in China, with physical exercise measure d at Time 1, positive affect and self-efficacy at Time 2, and job performance at Time 3. The hypothes ized mediation model was tested using PROCESS Model 4 with 5,000 bootstrap samples.The results indicated that physical exercise significantly predicted both positive affect and self-efficacy, and that these psychological resources, in turn, were positively associated with job performance. Notably, wh en positive affect and self-efficacy were included simultaneously, the direct effect of physical exercis e on job performance was reduced and became non-significant, while the indirect effects through bot h mediators remained significant, highlighting the dominant role of the mediated pathways. These res ults suggest that the effects of physical exercise on job performance are primarily transmitted through psychological resources, rather than directly.From a theoretical perspective, these findings highlight that physical exercise functions as an upstream resource investment behavior whose effects on job pe rformance are mainly exerted through the accumulation of psychological resources, thereby extendin g COR theory to the non-work domain. From a practical perspective, the results suggest that organiza tional efforts to leverage physical exercise for performance improvement should focus on designing e xercise interventions that effectively enhance employees' positive affect and self-efficacy, rather than merely encouraging participation per se.
Keywords: Conservation of resourcestheory, Exercise behavior, positive affect, self-efficacy, work outcomes
Received: 03 Jan 2026; Accepted: 16 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Yang, Yuan, Zhou, Wu and Xu. 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: Mengsha Yuan
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