After-hours digital demands and police stress: moderating roles of personality, leadership, and team-member interaction

This study examines associations between supervisors’ after-hours digital work requests and job stress, burnout, and quality of life among frontline police officers using a cross-sectional, multilevel survey design. Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources framework, we investigate whether individual personality traits and group-level leadership and team interactions moderate these associations.After-hours digital demands are conceptualised as a specific form of technologically mediated job demand that extends work boundaries and may constrain opportunities for recovery. Using generalised structural equation modelling and hierarchical linear modelling, results show that after-hours digital demands are positively associated with job stress and burnout and negatively associated with quality of life. Personality moderation was not uniform only extraversion significantly moderated the after-hours digital demand–stress association, and the positive interaction indicated an amplifying rather than buffering pattern.These findings highlight the importance of organisational boundary governance and cautious interpretation of individual-difference effects when managing after-hours connectivity demands. Because the study is cross-sectional, these implications should be interpreted as organisational options to be evaluated rather than as evidence that any specific intervention is more effective than another.