Psychosocial risks and emotional exhaustion among university employees: the mediating role of perceived stress and the moderating role of resilience

Psychosocial risks are an important occupational health concern and may be associated with emotional exhaustion through psychological mechanisms related to employees’ appraisal of adverse working conditions. This secondary analysis used a quantitative, cross-sectional design and data from 458 university employees to examine the mediating role of perceived stress and the moderating role of resilience in the association between psychosocial risks and emotional exhaustion. Correlation, mediation, and moderation analyses were performed, with bootstrap estimation based on 10,000 resamples. Greater psychosocial risk was associated with higher perceived stress and emotional exhaustion, whereas resilience was associated with lower perceived stress. Perceived stress partially mediated the association between psychosocial risks and emotional exhaustion, accounting for approximately 32.5% of the total association. The stress–resilience interaction was statistically significant in the unadjusted model, although its incremental contribution was small (ΔR² = 0.004); after adjustment for sociodemographic and occupational covariates, the interaction retained a similar direction but did not reach conventional statistical significance (p = 0.058). The model accounted for 59.6% of the variance in emotional exhaustion. Given the cross-sectional design, these findings represent statistical associations and do not establish temporal or causal relationships. The results support considering organizational psychosocial conditions, perceived stress, and resilience jointly when examining occupational well-being among university employees.