Anxiety as fuel? FoMO-AI and employee creativity through creative process engagement: the moderating roles of growth mindset and critical thinking

Using the transactional theory of stress and coping (TTSC) as an overarching stressor–response framework, compensatory control theory (CCT) to explain compensatory engagement, and conservation of resources (COR) theory to explain resource-based boundary conditions, this study examines whether fear of missing out on artificial intelligence (FoMO-AI) is associated with self-reported employee creativity through creative process engagement (CPE) and whether growth mindset and critical thinking condition this indirect association. A three-wave, time-lagged survey was conducted with 320 employees recruited through the Credamo platform in China. The hypothesized model, which did not include a direct FoMO-AI-to-creativity path, was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with 5,000 bootstrap samples. A separately estimated direct-path sensitivity model and necessary condition analysis (NCA) provided complementary assessments. In the hypothesized model, FoMO-AI was positively associated with CPE (β = 0.461, p < 0.001), CPE was positively associated with creativity (β = 0.520, p < 0.001), and the hypothesized indirect effect was 0.240 ( p < 0.001). The FoMO-AI–CPE association was stronger at higher levels of growth mindset (β = 0.505, p < 0.001), and the CPE–creativity association was stronger at higher levels of critical thinking (β = 0.190, p = 0.002). The results supported a first-stage moderated mediation pattern and conditionally supported a second-stage moderated mediation pattern, which was significant at the mean and high levels of growth mindset but not at the low level. In the separately estimated direct-path sensitivity model, the added FoMO-AI-to-creativity path (β = 0.417, p < 0.001) and the corresponding indirect effect through CPE (β = 0.197, p < 0.001) were significant, whereas the critical-thinking interaction was nonsignificant (β = 0.042, p = 0.321). Estimates from the sensitivity model were not used to evaluate the hypotheses. NCA identified moderate, sample-bound necessity effects for CPE (CR-FDH: d = 0.173, p < 0.001) and critical thinking (CR-FDH: d = 0.109, p = 0.034), whereas the effect for growth mindset was nonsignificant. These necessity results do not imply sufficiency or causality. The single-country, non-probability platform sample, panel attrition, reliance on self-reports, and lack of direct measures of stress appraisal and coping limit causal, population-level, and cross-cultural generalization. The findings should therefore be interpreted as sample-bound associations among the retained Chinese employees. Future research should use organizational, probability-based, and cross-national samples, collect supervisor-rated or behavioral creativity outcomes, and examine appraisal and coping processes directly. This study identifies an indirect association between FoMO-AI and self-reported creativity through CPE and clarifies stage-specific, resource-based boundary conditions. The separately estimated direct-path sensitivity model reveals a residual FoMO-AI–creativity association and indicates that the critical-thinking result is model-dependent, thereby qualifying a uniformly beneficial interpretation of FoMO-AI.