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. 2022 Dec 19:1–12. Online ahead of print. doi: 10.1007/s40299-022-00706-w

Does Telecommuting Incur Burnout in Teachers During the COVID-19 Quarantine Lockdown? A Moderated Mediation Model of Harmonious Passion and Housing Size

Yanzhe Zhou 1,2,4,✉, Gaolou Zhou 3
PMCID: PMC9762645

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, teachers who are accustomed to teaching and preparing lessons through traditional ways have been forced to move the workplace from school to home and to shift their traditional working method to telecommuting. To understand how teachers are affected by the mandatory telecommuting, this study examined the association between telecommuting and teacher burnout and investigated the mediating role of harmonious passion and the moderating role of housing size in this relationship. Using data from 168 teachers, we tested our model and found that the extent of mandatory telecommuting not only has a direct positive effect on teachers’ burnout but also positively affects burnout by decreasing their harmonious passion for work. Housing size, the physical work environment during the quarantine lockdown, moderates this indirect effect. Future research can be carried out from perspectives of considering cross-cultural contexts, exploring different moderators, such as other physical conditions or individuals’ subjective feelings engendered by the pandemic situation, and investigating the impact of teachers’ telecommuting on students’ individual outcomes. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Keywords: Telecommuting, Burnout, Harmonious work passion, Housing size

Introduction

The COVID-19 lockdown has led to a mass relocation of the workplace to the home. Large numbers of companies, schools, and universities in countries worldwide have introduced mandatory telecommuting, requiring employees and teachers to work from home using information and communication technology (ICT).

Remote working is actually not a novelty for many enterprises. Employees were allowed to work outside the office long before modern electronic equipment became popular. Noticing this phenomenon, scholars proposed the concept of telecommuting (Nilles, 1975) and continually enriched its connotations through research alongside the rapid development of science and new technologies. Telecommuting was emphasized as a work practice that involves members of organizations working away from central workplaces and using technology to interact with others as needed to conduct work tasks (Allen et al., 2015). Because such a work practice provides great flexibility around the workplace and time arrangement, scholars have found a series of positive effects of telecommuting, such as saving commute time, improving job performance (Gajendran & Harrison, 2007). However, delving into telecommuting’s impact on employees, scholars have increasingly found that the work practice is likely to increase working hours and use of communication technology, and blur work–family boundaries, therefore causing damage to employees’ physical and mental health (Oakman et al., 2020), such as bringing insomnia problems (Salanova et al., 2013), inducing feelings of anxiety and depression (Schieman & Young, 2013) and leading to emotional exhaustion (Derks & Bakker, 2014). These findings are thought-provoking. Even employees who volunteer for telecommuting can be easily harmed by this work practice, so what about teachers who are forced to shift their traditional working method to telecommuting during the COVID-19 quarantine?

In fact, individuals’ negative feelings about telecommuting during the pandemic seem to be more prominent than before. A half of Romanian employees who had to work more from home for over 1 years generally reported feelings of reduced flexibility in work (Marica, 2021). According to Fox (2020), over two-thirds of employees participating in a survey conducted by a global online employment platform in US reported burnout feelings due to remote work during the COVID-19 and the burnout rate appears to be growing (Li et al., 2022). One possible reason to explain why this situation occurs may be that individuals are compelled to, rather than voluntarily, work from home due to the containment measures imposed by governments. Moreover, it also should be noted that not all organizations or occupations are well-prepared or suitable for working virtually, because telecommuting is associated with changes not only in work locations but also in the nature of tasks, work arrangement, and interpersonal engagements (Li et al., 2022). This means that for teachers using telecommuting during the COVID-19 pandemic, they seem to be facing unprecedented challenges. Due to the pandemic prevention policy, they have to immediately abandon the traditional offline teaching methods, which they used to engage in and undoubtedly enable them to have more dynamic, real-time and face-to-face interactions with students and colleagues, to adopt mandatory telecommuting. Meanwhile, schools that do not have enough time to prepare for the switching of teaching method can only provide limited support or resources for teachers. Given that telecommuting may still be used by teachers for a prolonged period, it is indisputable that understanding the influence of telecommuting on teachers is especially important. Some recent studies have already tried to explore online education effectiveness or teachers’ reactions to telecommuting (e.g., Petrila et al., 2022; Sârbu et al., 2021; Simut et al., 2021). However, most of these studies at the initial stage have generally overlooked the mandatory nature of telecommuting used by teachers during the pandemic lockdown, and therefore failed to illustrate whether and how mandatory telecommuting influence teachers. Thus, considering that we still know little about whether telecommuting is a good choice for teachers and that they must, at least to some extent, be affected by mandatory telecommuting when they are forced to adopt this novel way of teaching before well-prepared, we are intrigued to know how mandatory telecommuting affects teachers’ psychological states. Will the extent of mandatory telecommuting bring about job burnout? What is the explanatory mechanism? Are there any boundary conditions? Because previous research findings have shown that teachers are at particular risk of burnout (Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998), which may degrade the quality of their teaching and the school functioning (Chang, 2009), it is necessary to explore and answer the above questions.

Some scholars have pointed out that teachers fired up about their works become vulnerable to burnout and that the passion toward work, a strong inclination toward an activity that one likes, finds important, and in which one invests time and energy (Vallerand et al., 2003), might explain the relationship between job-related factors and burnout (Fernet et al., 2014). Harmonious passion, which refers to a specific type of passion potentially caused by work factors and tends to bring individuals flow experience and induces positive emotions, has been argued as an important factor helping understand individuals’ burnout feelings at work (Carbonneau et al., 2008). It is suggested that when individuals have a greater sense of control over the way of working and their professional autonomy, they tend to have more harmonious work passion (Forest et al., 2012). Such arguments are particularly enlightening for us to understand the outcomes brought by compulsory telecommuting to teachers. Thus we regard it as a potential explanatory mechanism of the telecommuting-burnout relationship. Furthermore, with the relocation of the workplace to individual homes, it is worth noting that physical work conditions for teachers have also changed from the school, which is a relatively open work space, to a closed residential space. Studies have shown that physical work conditions especially spatial constraints can shape one’s cognition and affect (Bitner, 1992; O’Guinn et al., 2015; Okken et al., 2013), and influence psychological states (Xu et al., 2019). Thus, to gain a nuanced insight into the impact of mandatory telecommuting on teachers’ burnout during COVID-19, we consider the physical work environment as an important boundary condition of this relationship. Drawing on the passion model proposed by Vallerand et al. (2003) and self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), the core tenet of which is that individuals’ behaviors often shaped by the social environment, we propose a moderated mediation model. We first discuss the relationship between the extent of mandatory telecommuting and teachers’ burnout during the quarantine lockdown, then explore the mediating role of harmonious passion and the moderating role of housing size—a typical environmental variable reflecting the spatial properties of physical condition of teachers’ remote work—in the above relationship.

By answering the questions stated above, this study will contribute to the literature and practices in several ways. First, by exploring the impact of mandatory telecommuting on teachers’ psychological states during the quarantine lockdown, this study will help understand how teachers are affected by the work practice that differs from the traditional mode of teaching when they were not able to choose work methods. Second, by exploring the mediating role of harmonious work passion in the relationship between prolonged mandatory telecommuting and burnout, this study will provide a novel explanatory mechanism underlying the relationship between mandatory telecommuting and individuals’ psychological states. Third, by exploring the association between the extent of mandatory telecommuting and harmonious passion, the findings of this study will extend the limited literature on the work-related antecedents of harmonious passion. Fourth, by discussing the moderating effect of the physical work environment, this study will enrich telecommuting research, which rarely focuses on the impact of physical conditions on individuals.

Theoretical Background and Hypotheses

Telecommuting and Burnout

Although there is no universally accepted definition of telecommuting to date, scholars have a relatively consistent understanding of where (typically homes) and how (typically dependent on the use of ICT, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers) this novel work practice is carried out. They have also emphasized that people may be required to interact with others through technologies to conduct work tasks during teleworking (e.g., Allen et al., 2015; Gajendran & Harrison, 2007). In-depth research on this novel practice has highlighted the fact that employees are not necessarily willing to accept telecommuting but are nevertheless forced to (Thatcher & Zhu, 2006).

Immediately and unexpectedly, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has moved millions of primary and secondary school teachers around the world from schools to their homes for self-isolation purposes. Teachers who work from home using ICT to interact with students and colleagues during the COVID-19 lockdown have actually engaged in mandatory telecommuting because they are not able to choose the way of working. Recent interviews of school teachers in public and private educational institutions have shown that teachers felt uncomfortable with the required telecommuting not only because they had to confine their way of working (Mheidly et al., 2020), but also because mandatory telecommuting led to increased work intensity, extended use of ICT, decreased time for rest, and blurring of work–family boundaries (Villa et al., 2020), all of which are stimulating factors of burnout (e.g., Derks & Bakker, 2014; Salanova et al., 2013), which is defined as a syndrome resulting from chronic work-related stress and characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment (Maslach et al., 2001; Zhang et al., 2019). Thus, based on these findings, we contend that telecommuting during the COVID-19 lockdown period can easily induce burnout in teachers. Moreover, as the degree of mandatory telecommuting increases, teachers are more likely to feel that they lack control over when, where, and how they work during mandatory teleworking (e.g., Kaduk et al., 2019), and experience psychological distress, poor sleep quality, and unhappiness (Schneider & Harknett, 2019) due to increased work intensity and prolonged use of ICT. Meanwhile, their tolerance ability can also be reduced because things restricting their freedom may cause them to be emotionally vulnerable (Li et al., 2022). Thus, overwhelmed by the time and energy demands and resorting to the excess use of emotional and psychological resources to deal with the feeling of poor control, teachers will experience chronic work-related distress and eventually feel burnout (Mheidly et al., 2020; Shimizu et al., 2011). We therefore hypothesize the following:

H1

The extent of mandatory telecommuting is positively related to burnout.

The Mediating Role of Harmonious Passion

Self-determination theory emphasizes the shaping of individuals’ behaviors by the social environment. It postulates that human motivation lies on a continuum ranging from fully autonomous (intrinsic) to fully controlled (extrinsic) and that the social environment is able to enhance human intrinsic motivation and promote the internalization of extrinsic motivation by satisfying three basic human psychological needs: autonomy (a desire to feel a sense of personal initiative), competence (a desire to interact effectively with the environment), and relatedness (a desire to feel connected to others) (Deci & Ryan, 2000). In line with this theory, Vallerand et al. (2003) proposed a model of passion and defined passion as a strong inclination toward an activity that one likes, finds important, and in which one invests time and energy, and results from the internalization process in human motivation. Harmonious passion generally develops when the activity has been freely chosen as one that is highly important for an individual and becomes part of his/her identity without any contingencies attached (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Vallerand et al., 2003). It has been considered a mediating mechanism that can help understand the impact of work-related factors on job burnout (e.g., Fernet et al., 2014), therefore it may provide an explanation of the relationship between mandatory telecommuting and burnout.

Specifically, during COVID-19 lockdown, teachers must work from home using ICT. Their willingness to accept such a way of working has not been taken into consideration (Mheidly et al., 2020). Although they may not necessarily feel that they are forced to teach, they are still likely to feel that they are forced to change their way of working, to perceive a threat to freedom or loss of freedom (Li et al., 2022) and less job autonomy (Jamal et al., 2022), and therefore have a lower sense of control over how to teach and a decreased perception of openness to experience (Mageau et al., 2009), which is likely to diminish harmonious passion for work (Forest et al., 2012). From the perspective of self-determination, teachers’ harmonious passion may also be diminished because of obstacles in the autonomous internalization process introduced by mandatory telecommuting. Specifically, in addition to a decreased sense of control over how they work (relevant to autonomous sense), teachers can also suffer from feelings of isolation. Although they are still able to communicate with others through ICT, mandatory telecommuting does reduce the connection between them and the workplace (Procentese et al., 2022), as well as effective face-to-face communication between them and their students or colleagues, change the dynamics of work-related interpersonal interactions (Allen et al., 2015), and therefore decrease emotional support they receive from students and colleagues (Huo et al., 2022). Thus, teachers’ desire to feel connected to others can be more hardly fulfilled due to the lack of high quality interpersonal interactions and the lack of support from or connection with coworkers because of prolonged periods of remote working. Moreover, mandatory telecommuting during pandemic lockdown can impose hardships on teachers. It largely restricts what the school can offer teachers, thus restricting schools from providing the work environment that meets teachers’ values (Li et al., 2022). Also, it puts teachers’ job-related efficacy at risk (Procentese et al., 2022) because they need to work for longer hours to familiarize themselves with the changes, learn new things, and develop new routines (Chong et al., 2020). For example, they must use various software programs to teach, which can be complicated to learn (Thatcher & Zhu, 2006). Thus, as the degree of mandatory telecommuting increases, teachers are more likely to feel that their needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence in work can hardly be satisfied. This therefore impedes the process of autonomous internalization and the generation of harmonious passion, which has been argue to be able to provide individuals with the energy to fully engage in their work and derive satisfaction from it while still fully pursuing other life interests that should protect them from burnout (Vallerand et al., 2010). Thus, the reduced harmonious passion caused by mandatory telecommuting is barely able to reduce depression and anxiety, or generate flow experiences, positive emotions, and other indices of psychological adjustment (Lavigne et al., 2012) which might help prevent burnout (Carbonneau et al., 2008). Thus, we hypothesize the following:

H2

Harmonious passion mediates the positive relationship between the extent of mandatory telecommuting and burnout.

The Moderating Role of Housing Size

It is noteworthy that the physical work environment for teachers during the quarantine lockdown has also changed from a relatively open work spaces to a closed residential space. Previous studies have found that work environment factors play a significant role in predicting teachers’ burnout (Foley & Murphy, 2015). As a typical environmental variable, the size of the physical space can not only determine and limit the occurrence of social interactions (Forgas, 1979), but also affect individuals’ cognition about self- and work-related factors, emotions, feelings, and psychological states (Bitner, 1992; Islam, 2021). Because teachers have been generally required to engage in telecommuting at home during the quarantine lockdown, the size of their homes, as an important work environmental factor, might play an important role in the effects of telecommuting on teachers’ burnout via harmonious passion.

Specifically, compared with a larger home where there is room for telecommuters to avoid being overly disturbed, the smaller the housing size, the more likely it is for the interpersonal conflict within the work–family condition to be salient due to fewer barriers (e.g., Islam, 2021; Maulida & Widiaty, 2022; Shaukat et al., 2022). At work, they are more likely to be interrupted or distracted by family activities (e.g., family members’ chatting, entertainment activities) that would usually take place outside of work (Sarbu, 2018; Sârbu et al., 2021; Shaukat et al., 2022). These interruptions not only lead to physical discomfort, but also damage mental health by reducing their flow experience at work and evoke negative emotions and unpleasant feelings (Bitner, 1992). Moreover, the size of the physical space will also directly affect individuals’ perceptions of crowding (Okken et al., 2013; Sundstrom, 1975), which tend to make them feel rushed and disoriented and bring greater feelings of pressure (Xu et al., 2019). In addition, in an environment that restricts people’s body movements, individuals will have a lower sense of autonomy and personal control, which is not conducive to harmonious passion (Vallerand et al., 2003). They are more likely to be overstimulated by the small amounts of space and find it difficult to maintain enthusiasm and vitality for work (Oldham & Fried, 1987), and less likely to maintain their interest in other activities that can, to some extent, relieve their feelings of stress or burnout (Vallerand et al., 2010). Thus, a smaller housing size is likely to offset the positive effects of harmonious work passion by reducing teachers’ positive work experience and positive emotions, therefore weakens the inhibitory effect of harmonious passion on burnout, and weakens or even wholly negates the mediating effects of harmonious passion. We therefore hypothesize the following:

H3

Housing size moderates the indirect relationship between the extent of mandatory telecommuting and burnout via harmonious passion.

Method

Sample Selection and Data Source

In this study, during the period when people were being placed under lockdown to prevent the epidemic, we followed prior works (Martins et al., 2002) and used a snowball sampling approach to collect data through online questionnaire survey. To reduce the possibility of common method variance (Podsakoff et al., 2003), we administered our surveys in two waves with two weeks apart. The links of online questionnaires were initially sent to seven teachers with managerial positions from seven schools. They were asked to take the responsibility of contacting and sending the questionnaire links to their colleagues or teacher friends at different time points to fill out our two waves of survey. To match surveys while maintaining participant anonymity, participants were asked to report their email addresses and the last four digits of mobile phone numbers and were ensured that their responses would be kept strictly confidential. In the first wave of survey, which contained measures of the extent of mandatory telecommuting, harmonious passion and control variables, the questionnaire was sent to 329 primary and secondary school teachers from more than ten cities in eight provinces of China. To ensure that the sample of this study fell under the category of forced telecommuting, respondents were required to answer whether they were experiencing mandatory telecommuting at the start of the questionnaire. Two weeks later, we measured burnout and housing size. Complete information was obtained from168 teachers, representing an overall response rates of 51.1%.

The sample comprised 118 female and 50 male teachers, and 79.8% respondents were between 25 and 50 years old. 67.2% participants have been teachers for 10–30 years. More than half respondents (53.6%) earned ¥100,000 to 200,000 per year, and almost every teacher (99.4% respondents) had bachelor degree or above.

Measures

To form the questionnaire of our study, we adopted mature scales from existing researches. Because all the measures used in this study were originally composed in English, following the translation and back translation procedures recommended by Brislin (1980), we invited two bilingual experts to firstly translate them into Chinese, then back translate to English, and then discuss and resolve any resulting discrepancies. Finally, all measures were administered in Chinese and used a 7-point Likert-type scale unless otherwise indicated.

Extent of Mandatory Telecommuting

The extent of mandatory telecommuting was assessed using the measure developed by Golden et al. (2006). Following the prior work conducted by Kaduk et al. (2019), respondents were asked to report the average number of hours per week they had to spent on telecommuting away from the office.

Harmonious Passion

Harmonious passion was assessed using Vallerand et al.’ (2003) 7-items scale. Items were assessed on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree). A sample item is “This activity is in harmony with the other activities in my life”. Cronbach’s alpha for this scale in our study was 0.93.

Burnout

Burnout was assessed by Iwanicki & Schwab (1981) 22-items scale that measures teachers’ burnout. Each item was assessed on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (never happened) to 7 (happened every day). A sample item is “I feel emotionally drained from my work”. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.93.

Housing Size

Refer to Okken et al. (2013), we asked respondents to report the square meters of their telecommuting environment, which is usually their home, because of the Home Quarantine Order.

Control Variables

Based on prior telecommuting studies (e.g., Golden, 2012; Raghuram & Fang, 2014; Jamal et al., 2022), we controlled demographic factors (e.g., age, gender, education, organizational tenure, and income) and household size because these factors were suggested to influence the experiences of teleworkers and change telecommuting outcomes. For example, women may perceive more advantages of telecommuting than men (e.g., Mokhtarian et al., 1996). Employees with longer tenure may be more comfortable and have fewer concerns about telecommuting (e.g., Raghuram & Fang, 2014). Younger employees and employees with higher education level or higher income may be more likely to express a preference for telecommuting (e.g., Bailey & Kurland, 2002; Huws et al., 1990; Matson et al., 2021; Peters et al., 2004). Telecommuters with larger households experience more family-to-work conflict (e.g., Golden et al., 2006), which may contribute to stress faced by them and increase the risk of burnout (Haslam et al., 2013). Furthermore, given that social experience may influence feelings of exhaustion or burnout (e.g., Hu & Subramony, 2022; Pacewicz et al., 2019) and that sleep condition generally correlates with teleworkers’ anxiety/depression (Afonso et al., 2021) and affects teachers’ work passion (Lu, 2019), we also controlled these variables. Respondents were requested to report the total number of family members living in the home during the pandemic lockdown and their average sleep hours per day and social hours per week during their telecommuting.

Results

Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 displays descriptive statistics and correlations of all variables. As the table indicates, the extent of mandatory telecommuting was significantly related to harmonious passion (r = − 0.23, p < 0.01) and teacher’s burnout (r = 0.25, p < 0.01). Harmonious passion was significantly related to teacher’s burnout (r = − 0.54, p < 0.01).

Table 1.

Means(M), standard deviations(SD), and correlations between measurable variables

Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
1. Extent of mandatory telecommuting 16.20 14.30
2. Burnout 2.90 0.80 0.25**
3. Harmonious Passion 4.50 1.24 − 0.23** − 0.54**
4. Housing Size 68.56 55.32 − 0.03 − 0.01 0.02
5. Gender 1.70 0.46 0.09 − 0.02 0.04 0.04
6. Education 3.13 0.36 − 0.00 − 0.05 − 0.08 0.09 − 0.02
7. Age 4.98 1.58 − 0.10 − 0.12 0.16* 0.04 − 0.30** − 0.13
8. Tenure 20.28 9.21 − 0.10 − 0.12 0.16* 0.06 − 0.24** − 0.13 0.91**
9. Income 1.58 0.54 0.02 0.03 − 0.08 − 0.03 − 0.19* 0.01 0.19* 0.20**
10. Experience of telecommute 1.71 0.45 − 0.05 − 0.02 − 0.06 0.05 − 0.04 − 0.10 − 0.01 − 0.02 0.00
11. Social contact hours 10.37 10.79 0.44** 0.09 − 0.00 − 0.13 0.03 0.06 − 0.07 − 0.09 0.05 − 0.11
12. Sleep 8.16 2.33 − 0.09 − 0.02 − 0.11 0.01 0.04 − 0.00 0.06 0.13 0.12 0.13 − 0.10
13. Household size 2.96 1.88 − 0.04 − 0.03 0.03 0.10 0.02 0.11 − 0.08 − 0.04 0.06 − 0.08 0.11 − 0.14
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N = 168.

*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01

Hypothesis Testing

Before proceeding to our primary analysis, we first conducted Harman’s one-factor test. Results showed that the first factor only explains 38.19% of the total variance, indicating that common method variance is not likely to be a problem in our study. Using Mplus 7.4 and maximum-likelihood estimation, we also conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We compared a one-factor model (χ2/df = 5.26, CFI = 0.79, TLI = 0.75, SRMR = 0.11) with hypothesized four-factor model (χ2/df = 2.77, CFI = 0.92, TLI = 0.89, SRMR = 0.11). Results showed that the latter produced better fit than the former model (∆χ2(4) = 145.28, p < 0.01), indicating a good discriminant validity of focal variables in our study.

Bootstrap analyses (drawing 5000 random samples with replacement from the full sample) were conducted using PROCESS macro for SPSS. Mediation analysis was performed with the Preacher and Hayes (2008) bootstrapping procedure to estimate the direct and indirect effect related to Hypothesis 1 and 2. The results are presented in Table 2. Hypothesis 1 predicted a direct positive effect of the extent of mandatory telecommuting on teacher’s burnout. It was supported given the path coefficients were statistically significance (b = 0.01, t = 2.94, p < 0.01). Hypothesis 2 proposed an indirect effect of the extent of mandatory telecommuting on teacher’s burnout through harmonious passion. Results indicated that harmonious passion significantly mediated the relationship between the extent of mandatory telecommuting and teacher’s burnout (estimate = 0.0084, SE = 0.0032; Variance Account For: 59.23%) with a bootstrapped 95% CI around the indirect effect not containing zero [0.0034, 0.0165]. Thus, Hypothesis 2 received support.

Table 2.

Simple mediation effect result of the relationship between the extent of telecommuting, harmonious passion and teachers’ burnout

Variable B SE t p
Bootstrap result for direct effect
 Extent of telecommuting regressed on harmonious passion − 0.02*** 0.01 − 3.36 0.00
 Extent of telecommuting regressed on burnout 0.01** 0.00 2.94 0.00
 Harmonious passion regressed on burnout − 0.34*** 0.04 − 7.57 0.00
Effect Boot SE Boot LLCI Boot ULCI
Bootstrap result for indirect effect
 Extent of telecommuting on Burnout 0.0084 0.0032 0.0034 0.0165
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Unstandardized coefficients are reported

SE is standard error, LLCI is bias corrected lower limit confidence interval, ULCI is bias corrected upper limit confidence interval

*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001

The test of Hypothesis 3 with 5,000 bootstrapped samples revealed a moderated indirect effect between the extent of mandatory telecommuting and teachers’ burnout through harmonious passion. Support was found for this hypothesis with a significant index in the moderated mediation model, with a bootstrapped 95% CI around the indirect effect, not containing zero. This indicates that the indirect effect between the extent of mandatory telecommuting and teacher’s burnout through harmonious passion is conditional upon housing size, with larger room size strengthening the indirect effect. The results are presented in Table 3.

Table 3.

Conditional indirect effect of teacher burnout at values (− 1SD, 1SD) of housing size

Predictor B SE t p
Harmonious passion
 Extent of telecommuting − 0.02*** 0.01 − 3.36 0.00
Burnout
 Extent of telecommuting 0.01 0.00 1.26 0.21
 Harmonious passion − 0.35*** 0.04 − 7.76 0.00
 Size 0.0004 0.00 0.39 0.69
 Harmonious passion * size − 0.0019* 0.00 − 2.29 0.02
Housing size Boot indirect effect Boot SE Boot LLCI Boot ULCI
− 1 SD 0.0059 0.0028 0.0020 0.0142
 + 1 SD 0.0110 0.0042 0.0044 0.0216
Index of moderated mediation Index Boot SE Boot LLCI Boot ULCI
Size 0.00005 0.00003 0.00001 0.00013
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Unstandardized coefficients are reported. Moderator values of low and high are the mean plus/minus one standard deviation

SE is standard error, LLCI is bias corrected lower limit confidence interval, ULCI is bias corrected upper limit confidence interval

*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001

Discussion

Teachers have been required to work from home using ICT due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To investigate the impact of mandatory telecommuting on teachers’ psychological states during the quarantine, this study examines how the extent of mandatory telecommuting affects teachers’ burnout via harmonious passion and highlights the role of physical conditions (i.e., housing size) in this relationship. Our analyses indicate that the extent of mandatory telecommuting has a positive direct effect on burnout, and that harmonious passion partially mediates this relationship. Furthermore, housing size plays a moderating role in this indirect effect in that the indirect effect is weaker or even disappears when housing size is small rather than large.

Theoretical Implications

This research has several important theoretical implications. First, the findings on the positive relationship between the extent of mandatory telecommuting and burnout provide evidence that prolonged involuntary telecommuting can be detrimental for teachers. Previous studies have mentioned the negative effects of mandatory telecommuting (Thatcher & Zhu, 2006), but failed to directly examine its impact on individuals’ psychological states (e.g., Huo et al., 2022; Jamal et al., 2022). In response to the call for further exploration (e.g., Jamal et al., 2021; Kaduk et al., 2019), this study explored and found the negative influence of mandatory telecommuting on burnout. Drawing on the model of passion (Vallerand et al., 2003) and self-determination theory, this study also demonstrates the partial mediating role of harmonious passion, thereby provides a possible explanation for how the extent of mandatory telecommuting affects burnout.

Second, this study found the influence of mandatory telecommuting on teachers’ harmonious work passion. Previous research focused more on studying outcomes of work passion and paid limited attention to its antecedents (Pollack et al., 2020). However, one’s generation of passion toward work and the change in passion can be affected by various factors related to work conditions such as job autonomy (e.g., Fernet et al., 2014) and management practices (e.g., Salas-Vallina et al., 2020). Thus, by emphasizing and exploring the impact of the novel work practice of telecommuting, which has not received enough attention, this study makes an incremental contribution to research on the work-related determinants of passion.

Third, the findings on the moderating role of housing size further enrich telecommuting studies about the moderation of objective work contexts and highlight the important impact of physical environments on individuals’ cognition and affect. Although existing telecommuting studies have noticed work-related contextual factors like task interdependence, and job type of the telecommuter (Gajendran & Harrison, 2007), they have paid less attention to the role of the physical work environment, which has been shown to influence people’s cognition and affect (O’Guinn et al., 2015). Thus, our findings underline the necessity of considering the physical context in studies focusing on the impact of telecommuting on telecommuters.

Practical Implications

Due to the COVID-19 quarantine lockdown, teachers have had to shift their workplace to their homes and use ICT to work. This experience differs from their traditional way of working. First, our findings show that a prolonged period of mandatory telecommuting generate teachers’ feelings of burnout. We recommend that school administrators avoid requiring teachers work remotely for a long time. If it is impossible to reduce teaching hours, administrators could try to develop flexible policies to allow teachers to choose whether to spend extra time on telecommuting. For example, administrators can avoid requiring teachers to prepare their lessons online using technical software or to overuse ICT to communicate with colleagues and students.

Second, our findings show that harmonious work passion can alleviate teachers’ feelings of burnout. Considering that harmonious passion develops when an individual freely decides that an activity is highly important and it becomes part of their identity without any contingencies attached to it, school administrators should cultivate an environment that allows for the generation of harmonious work passion by providing teachers with enough autonomy. This will ensure that they have a higher sense of control and perception of openness to experience when engaging in their work, both of which are positively associated with harmonious passion (Mageau et al., 2009).

Furthermore, in view of the moderating effect of the physical work environment on the relationship between harmonious passion and burnout, teachers engaging in mandatory telecommuting could accentuate the effect of harmonious passion on burnout by providing themselves spacious and comfortable work environments. Prior studies have also found that increases in physical space may generate one’s psychological space, in turn triggering a more positive affective experience at work (Okken et al., 2013), which can prevent individuals from experiencing long-term stress and feelings of burnout (Carbonneau et al., 2008). If the housing size is small, teachers can create a good working environment for themselves by reasonably arranging the furnishings in their homes to avoid perceptions of crowding.

Limitations and Future Directions

Our study has some limitations. First, participants of our study were all from China. Although teachers have been forced to telecommute because of the COVID-19 quarantine worldwide, those from different countries may have different attitudes toward the work and therefore have different psychological states because of cultural backgrounds or the diverse technologies they use for telecommuting. Thus, future research could compare the impact of telecommuting on teachers in a cross-cultural context by using samples from different countries. Second, we only assessed the moderating role of housing size as a physical environmental variable in this study. Given that the size of the physical working space (e.g., room or office) might only be one prominent feature in the workplace, future research could consider other physical conditions such as temperature, light, and type of furnishings to extend our investigation (Xu et al., 2019). Besides, this study strictly focused on investigating the moderating effect of the objective work environment, which has been obviously changed due to the pandemic lockdown, in the indirect relationship between telecommuting and burnout. However, during the COVID-19, individuals could be stimulated a bunch of pandemic-related subjective feelings (e.g., health anxiety, Özdin & Bayrak Özdin, 2020; job safety, Deldar et al., 2021; job or income security, Almeida & Santos, 2020) and these subjective feelings could also be potential boundary factors that moderate the influence of mandatory telecommuting on burnout. Thus, future research on the influence of telecommuting during the pandemic lockdown could pay attention to the moderating role of individuals’ subjective feelings engendered by the pandemic situation in addition to objective environment factors. Finally, this study only focused on exploring the impact of the extent of telecommuting on teachers’ psychological states. However, students might also be affected by their teachers and the novel teaching practice because their teachers’ passion for work can be influenced by prolonged telecommuting. Thus, future research could explore how teachers using long-term telecommuting influences students or whether telecommuting and traditional teaching methods will have different impacts on student outcomes such as their emotions, cognition, psychological states, and academic engagement and performance.

Conclusion

Given that teachers are at particular risk of burnout (Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998), our findings are highly relevant for educational researchers and practitioners especially in the period of COVID-19 quarantine. This study expands the findings of previous research on determinants of teachers’ burnout beyond the traditional work practice area and provides a new understanding of how a novel practice like telecommuting may influence teachers’ psychological states by decreasing their passion for work. The findings on the moderating effect of the physical work environment also provide researchers and practitioners with manageable ways to deal with the effect of prolonged telecommuting on teachers’ burnout.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by funding provided by China Scholarship Council (Grant Number: 202006360215).

Appendix

Extent of mandatory telecommuting

During the pandemic lockdown, how many hours do you have to spend on telecommuting per week on average ?

Harmonious passion

  1. This activity allows me to live a variety of experiences.

  2. The new things that I discover with this activity allow me to appreciate it even more.

  3. This activity allows me to live memorable experiences.

  4. This activity reflects the qualities I like about myself.

  5. This activity is in harmony with the other activities in my life.

  6. For me it is a passion, that I still manage to control.

  7. I am completely taken with this activity.

Burnout

  1. I feel emotionally drained from my work.

  2. I feel used up at the end of the workday.

  3. 1 feel fatigued when I get up in the morning and have to face another day on the job.

  4. Working with people all day is really a strain for me.

  5. I feel burned out from my work.

  6. I feel frustrated by my job.

  7. I feel I'm working too hard on my job.

  8. Working directly with people puts too much stress on me.

  9. I feel like I'm at the end of my rope.

  10. I feel I treat some recipients as if they were impersonal "objects."

  11. I've become more callous toward people since I took this job.

  12. I worry that this job is hardening me emotionally.

  13. I don't really care what happens to some recipients.

  14. I feel recipients blame me for some of their problems.

  15. I can easily understand how my recipients feel about things.(reverse item)

  16. I deal very effectively with the problems of my recipients. (reverse item)

  17. I feel I'm positively influencing other people's lives through my work. (reverse item)

  18. I feel very energetic. (reverse item)

  19. I can easily create a relaxed atmosphere with my recipients. (reverse item)

  20. I feel exhilarated after working closely with my recipients. (reverse item)

  21. I have accomplished many worthwhile things in this job. (reverse item)

  22. In my work, I deal with emotional problems very calmly. (reverse item)

Housing size

How many square meters is your telecommuting place (e.g., home, rental)?

Footnotes

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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