Open Access

ARTICLE

The Effect of Performance Pressure on Employee Well-Being: Mediator of Workplace Anxiety and Moderator of Vocational Delay of Gratification

Ting Wen¹, Sainan Mao¹, Xiaoqian Fan^2,*, Jiayi Wu³

1 School of Business Administration, Nanjing University of Finance & Economics, Nanjing, 210023, China
2 Department of Social and Ecological Civilization, Hebei Provincial Party School of the CPC (Hebei Institute of Administration), Shijiazhuang, 050000, China
3 Intellectual Property Department, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China

* Corresponding Author: Xiaoqian Fan. Email:

International Journal of Mental Health Promotion 2025, 27(4), 591-606. https://doi.org/10.32604/ijmhp.2025.057726

Received 26 August 2024; Accepted 21 February 2025; Issue published 30 April 2025

Abstract

Background: In the field of organizational behavior, various aspects that have an impact on employee well-being gradually become a focus of attention. Among them, performance pressure, which is a component of workplace stressors that has a great influence on employees’ job performance as well as well-being, has been little studied. Therefore, this paper constructs a research model, which uses workplace anxiety as a mediating variable and vocational delay of gratification as a moderating variable, to explore the impact of performance pressure on employee well-being. Methods: Reliable data were collected by questionnaire method and data analysis was conducted with the help of SPSS 26.0. In this paper, the data statistics are carried out by correlation analysis, mediation effect analysis, and moderating effect analysis, and the regression analysis is further studied. Results: The finding shows that performance pressure impacts employee well-being negatively, and workplace anxiety has a significant negative impact on employee well-being. When the workplace anxiety variable is added, the negative impact of performance pressure on employee well-being is still significant. Therefore, it can be verified that workplace anxiety plays an intermediary role in the influencing mechanism of performance pressure on employee well-being. While high vocational delay satisfaction weakens the influence of performance pressure on employee well-being. It’s interesting that under the adjustment of low delayed gratification, low-performance pressure will lead to higher employee well-being, and the organization's conscious reduction of performance pressure is conducive to improving employee well-being, and under the adjustment of high delayed gratification, low-performance pressure leads to higher employee well-being, and high-performance pressure leads to lower employee well-being, which shows the weakening effect of high delayed gratification, that means vocational delay gratification plays a negative regulating role in the influencing mechanism of performance pressure and employee well-being. Conclusion: Under the mediating role of workplace anxiety, performance pressure has a significant negative impact on employee well-being, and in this influence mechanism, vocational delay gratification plays a significant negative moderating role.

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