Overwork-induced exploitation of Chinese adults: Social isolation, loneliness as mediating effects on mental health

Abstract

Introduction

In the context of job competition and immense peer pressure in Chinese enterprises, excessive overtime has become an increasingly important risk factor affecting employees’ health.

Objective

In addition to low physical health from overwork, this research contributes a new perspective on the social isolation and loneliness on successive overtime to understanding employees’ increasingly low mental health.

Method

We used stepwise regression analysis and Bootstrap testing from a survey data. The subject, 583 employees, aged from 23 to 45 from various work institutions, completed a self-reported measure of overtime frequency, social isolation, and mental health.

Results

Employees have higher family isolation and loneliness due to overwork, resulting in higher depression and lower life satisfaction, while friends’ isolation's mediating effect is insignificant. Employees with more overtime days, involuntary overtime or uncompensated overtime, tend to be higher depression and lower life satisfaction because of lacking contact with family and longtime loneliness. Moreover, this paper also considers individual-sensitive factors. Employees living alone are more vulnerable to suffering from family isolation. Besides, salary and occupation would affect the degree of loneliness.

Conclusion

This study confirms that overtime significantly affects employees’ mental health through family isolation and loneliness as mediating effects. This paper proposes policy recommendations for mitigating overtime exploitation based on these conclusions.