Police Cadets’ Career Plans in China: Testing the Mediation and Moderation Effects of Job Satisfaction

In recent decades, police organizations have encountered difficulty in maintaining employees; a large number of police officers are leaving the service early. Using data collected from three police colleges in three different provinces in China, this study examines the mechanism of cadets’ career plan or turnover intention. Specifically, the test of a mediating mechanism in this study demonstrates the extent to which satisfaction mediates the relationship between distal factors and career plans among police cadets. Besides, the test of a moderating mechanism focuses on the possibility that the predictors differ in the relationship with cadets’ career plans by the degree of satisfaction. This study results found that satisfaction had no mediating effect. Instead, results showed that police cadets’ satisfaction is a strong moderator in the link between predictors and their career plans. Implications for recruitment, training, and retention strategies, as well as avenues for future research, are then discussed.