ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1681862
This article is part of the Research TopicNavigating Environmental Hazards in the Workplace: Impacts and InterventionsView all 26 articles
Lunch Breaks as a Buffer: Mitigating the Negative Effects of Road Traffic Noise on Urban Employee Workplace Behavior
Provisionally accepted
- 1Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
- 2Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
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The impact of road traffic noise annoyance on individual health is well-documented in environmental and health studies. However, less attention has been given to its negative effects on employees' work behaviors and effective mitigation strategies. Drawing on conservation of resources theory and general strain theory, this research conducted a three-wave survey involving 816 urban employees from 304 Chinese cities. The results revealed a significant positive correlation between residential road traffic noise annoyance and employees' mental health complaints, work withdrawal, and workplace aggressive behaviors. Mental health complaints were confirmed to fully and partially mediate the relationship between noise annoyance and work withdrawal and workplace aggressive behaviors, respectively. The organizational lunch break environment negatively moderates the link between residential road traffic noise annoyance and mental health complaints. These findings underscore the importance of addressing noise annoyance to enhance both employee welfare and organizational efficacy.
Keywords: Residential road traffic noise annoyance, Mental health complaints, Work withdrawal, Workplace aggressive behaviors, Organizational lunch break environment
Received: 08 Aug 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ke, Wang, Zhang, Liu and Wang. 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: Yufei Zhang, yff667@outlook.com
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