How Do COVID-19 Risk, Life-Safety Risk, Job Insecurity, and Work–Family Conflict Affect Miner Performance? Health-Anxiety and Job-Anxiety Perspectives

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has created challenging working conditions in coal-production activities. In addition to the massive loss of resources for miners, it has had a devastating impact on these individuals’ mental health. Based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory and a resource-loss perspective, this study examined the impact of COVID-19 risk, life-safety risk, perceived job insecurity, and work–family conflict on miners’ job performance. Moreover, this study investigated the mediating role of job anxiety (JA) and health anxiety (HA). The study data were collected through online structured questionnaires disseminated to 629 employees working in a coal mine in China. The data analysis and hypothesis generation were conducted using the structural equation modeling (partial least squares) method. The results demonstrated that the perception of COVID-19 risk, life-safety risk, job insecurity, and work–family conflict negatively and significantly impacted miners’ job performance. In addition, JA and HA negatively mediated the relationships between the perception of COVID-19 risk, life-safety risk, perceived job insecurity, work–family conflict, and job performance. The findings of this study can give coal-mining companies and their staff useful insights into how to minimize the pandemic’s effects on their operations.