The ethical threat of loneliness: the impact of workplace loneliness on cheating behavior

With the prevalence of remote work and hybrid work, face-to-face socialization opportunities between employees have been on the decline, leading to more and more employees experiencing loneliness at work. To identify the impact of experiencing loneliness on employees’ unethical behavior, this study investigated the relationship between workplace loneliness and employees’ workplace cheating behavior. Based on self-regulation theory, we explored the mediating role of emotional exhaustion and the moderating effect of task visibility from the perspective of self-regulation impairment. Through three-wave data collection and analysis involving 332 employees working from home, our results indicated that workplace loneliness can promote employees’ workplace cheating behavior by increasing emotional exhaustion. Especially in environments with low task visibility, our hypothesis was more strongly supported. This study extends the negative outcomes of workplace loneliness from the perspective of employees’ unethical behavior and reveals the mechanisms behind this relationship. It provides valuable theoretical and practical insights into understanding the potential ethical challenges of workplace loneliness and how the task characteristics of remote work influence the negative outcomes of workplace loneliness.