AI Anxiety, Digital Overload, and Technostress in a Polycrisis Context: A Moderated Mediation Study of Emotional Exhaustion and Psychological Well-Being Across Four Industry Sectors

Abstract Background : The concurrent occurrence of AI-induced disruption, rapid post-pandemic digitalization, and macroeconomic instability has fundamentally reshaped the psychological demands of modern work, creating a polycrisis. Staff members in digital work environments experience rising AI anxiety, digital overload, and technostress, but how such polycrisis-related demands impact PWB through these mechanisms and the extent to which personal resources may act as a shield against such an effect has not been comprehensively understood yet. Based on the assumptions of the Job Demands-Resources model, the present study examines a model of moderated mediation, wherein emotional exhaustion mediates the demand-PWB association, and psychological capital (PsyCap) moderates and strengthens PWB. Methods: Cross-sectional surveys using six psychometric scales were conducted among 340 full-time workers from sectors such as IT, Health care, Education, and Banking/Finance. Hypotheses regarding the structure were validated using CB-SEM with 5,000 bias corrected bootstraps whereas sector-specific MGA and fsQCA identified configurations related to lower PWB. Results: All three job demands were able to predict emotional exhaustion: AI anxiety (β = 0.396, p < 0.001), digital overload (β = 0.333, p < 0.001), and technostress (β = 0.318, p < 0.001), explaining 32.1% of the variance. Emotional exhaustion fully mediated the influence of all three variables on PWB (β = -0.434, p < 0.001) through bootstrapped indirect effects. PsyCap had a significant direct effect on PWB (β = 0.460, p < 0.001) for all four sectors. Through MGA, sector-specific differences emerged with regard to AI anxiety, which was more important in the IT sector, digital overload in Healthcare and Banking/Finance, and technostress in the Education sector. In fsQCA, digital overload was found as a necessary condition for low PWB (consistency = 0.909), where there were three configurations, each required low PsyCap as a boundary condition (solution consistency = 0.841, coverage = 0.573). Conclusions: Demands resulting from polycrisis are linked to low PWB mainly because of emotional exhaustion, and demand salience differs significantly across sectors. Low PsyCap functions as a universal boundary condition for low levels of well-being. Organisations should prioritise PsyCap development as an industry-invariant approach in addition to demand management, which takes into account the characteristics of the job.