Is Fear of COVID-19 Leading to Future Career Anxiety and Turnover Intentions? Problematic Social Media Use and Confidence in the Vaccine as a Mediator

Abstract

This study examines the impact of COVID-19 on future career anxiety. It employs problematic social media use and confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine as the mediators to understand the impact of future career anxiety on the turnover intention during this pandemic. A structured questionnaire was used to collect responses from faculty of education institutes in India. Two hundred forty responses from 24 institutions are utilized for further analysis using PLS-SEM. Our findings show that the mediators, confidence in the vaccine and problematic social media use, mediate the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and future career anxiety. Future career anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered turnover intention mainly due to the drastic change in the work culture it has brought in its wake. Fear of COVID-19 has a significant relationship with future career anxiety, leading to turnover intention among the faculty. Problematic social media use impacts future career anxiety. This study provides a model to explore the relationship between fear of COVID-19, and future career anxiety with confidence in vaccine and problematic social media use as the mediating variables. Our findings extend the conservation of resources theory.