I’d Rather Talk to AI About Work Stress: Extending the O-S-R-O-R Model Through Human-AI Communication in Workplace Health Contexts

Employees' work stress has become an important public health issue, yet health communication scholarship has paid limited attention to how employees process and respond to work-stress-related information. Drawing on the O-S-R-O-R model and the self-efficacy literature, this study examines whether exposure to work-stress-related news is associated with employees' stress coping efficacy and perceived work stress through three reasoning processes: elaboration/intrapersonal communication, interpersonal communication, and human-AI communication. An online survey of 502 full-time employees from different industries in the US showed that exposure to work-stress-related news was positively associated with elaboration, interpersonal communication, and human-AI communication. However, only elaboration and human-AI communication were positively associated with stress coping efficacy, whereas interpersonal communication was not. Stress coping efficacy, in turn, was negatively associated with perceived work stress. The findings suggest that employees' cognitive engagement with work-stress-related news and their use of AI-mediated communication may help strengthen coping efficacy, whereas interpersonal discussion alone may not necessarily translate into greater perceived coping capacity. Together, these findings extend the O-S-R-O-R model to AI-mediated workplace health contexts while offering practical implications for employees, organizations, and AI technology developers seeking to support healthier stress-coping environments.