Binary Work Stressors and Work Procrastination: The Mediating Role of Work Attentiveness and Emotional Exhaustion and the Moderating Role of Regulatory Focus

The high costs of work procrastination underscore the necessity of understanding this behavior. Drawing from the affective events theory and the regulatory focus theory, we adopt an emotion-based perspective to suggest differential effects of binary work stressors on work procrastination, mediated by two forms of emotions (work attentiveness and emotional exhaustion) and moderated by individual regulatory focus. A two-wave survey study (Study 1) tests the proposed model. The findings reveal that challenge stressors impede employees from engaging in work procrastination through increased work attentiveness, especially among those with a high promotion regulatory focus. However, hindrance stressors prompt work procrastination through increased emotional exhaustion, especially among employees with a high prevention regulatory focus. Two scenario experiments (Study 2a and Study 2b) strengthen the causal inference between binary work stressors and emotional responses. These findings have notable practical and theoretical implications.