Impact of emotional exhaustion on job performance and intention to leave in service industry in nepal

Abstract

This study examines the impact of emotional exhaustion on job performance and intention to leave among employees in Nepal’s service industry. It also looks into the mediating role of job satisfaction on these relationships and the serial mediating effect of job satisfaction and job performance between emotional exhaustion and the intention to leave. A self-administered questionnaire utilizing a five-point Likert scale was used to gather data from 406 employees in banking, finance, medicine, education, hospitality, and other fields. For analysis, descriptive statistics as well as structural equation modeling with SPSS 25 and Smart PLS 4 were applied. The study is grounded on the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, which explains how employees’ resources are drained by emotional exhaustion, the Demand-Resources model of performance which focuses on the relationship between resources, job demands, and performance outcomes, and the Stressor-Emotion model, which focuses on the work attitudes and behaviors resulting from emotions tied to stress. The findings indicate that while emotional exhaustion does not impact job satisfaction, it does increase job performance and intention to leave. Job satisfaction affects performance at work, and intention to leave does not significantly depend on either. As revealed by mediation analysis, job satisfaction fully mediates the relationship between intention to leave and job performance, and job performance partially mediates the relationship between emotional exhaustion and intention to leave. No serial mediation effect was observed.