Abstract
Besides being a threat to public physical health, COVID-19 may also bring harm to peoples’ mental health as well. This preliminary study aimed to explore how different levels of social exposure might result in different mental health outcomes (e.g., burnout) on frontline metro staff, who guarantee the efficiency and safety of urban transportation. Three positions of frontline metro staff with different levels of social exposure, namely station attendants, train drivers, and maintenance workers. Two waves of cross-sectional studies were conducted at two time points, one was shortly after the lockdown in 2020, the other was 5 months later in July 2020. Results showed that there is no significant difference between stress levels after the lockdown. However, a significant difference was observed in the burnout levels after several months of operation. Staff with more contact with passengers (i.e., station attendants) reported the highest level of burnout. Staff with less contact with passengers (i.e., maintenance workers) reported the lowest level of burnout. A possible explanation of such phenomenon was that higher social exposure during the pandemic may cause more anxiety and fear to be infected as well as more emotional labor to deal with people wearing masks. We also discussed possible methods to improve the well-being of metro staff.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Wang, C., Horby, P.W., Hayden, F.G., Gao, G.F.: A novel coronavirus outbreak of global health concern. Lancet 395(10223), 470–473 (2020)
Toscano, F., Zappalà, S.: Social isolation and stress as predictors of productivity perception and remote work satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic: the role of concern about the virus in a moderated double mediation. Sustainability 12 (2020)
Xiao, C.: A novel approach of consultation on 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19)-related psychological and mental problems: structured letter therapy. Psychiatry Invest. 17(2), 175–176 (2020)
Andraszak, N.: Engagement of the police during the COVID-19 crisis: how did the pandemic change the work of police officers? E-Mentor 3, 32–40 (2020)
Roman, M., Pea, A., Rajko, M., Trukelj, T.: Building organisational sustainability during the COVID-19 pandemic with an inspiring work environment. Sustainability 13 (2021)
Albery, I.P., Spada, M.M., Nikcevic, A.V.: The COVID-19 anxiety syndrome and selective attentional bias towards COVID-19-related stimuli in UK residents during the 2020–2021 pandemic. Clin. Psychol. Psychother. 28(6), 1367–1378 (2021)
Holmes, E.A., et al.: Multidisciplinary research priorities for the COVID-19 pandemic: a call for action for mental health science. Lancet Psychiatry 7(6), 547–560 (2020)
Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W.B., Leiter, M.P.: Job burnout. Ann. Rev. Psychol. 52(1), 397–422 (2001)
Schaufeli, W.B., Bakker, A.B.: Job demands, job resources, and their relationship with burnout and engagement: a multi-sample study. J. Organ. Behav. 25(3), 293–315 (2004)
Moron, M., Yildirim, M., Jach, L., Nowakowska, J., Atlas, K.: Exhausted due to the pandemic: validation of coronavirus stress measure and COVID-19 burnout scale in a Polish sample. Curr. Psychol. (2021)
Friganovi, A., Seli, P.: Levels of burnout syndrome in Croatian critical care nurses: a cross-sectional study. Psychiatria Danubina 32(Suppl. 4), 478–483 (2020)
Sara, H., et al.: Immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the work and personal lives of Australian hospital clinical staff. Australian Health Review: A Publication of the Australian Hospital Association (2021)
Back, C.Y., Hyun, E.S., Jeung, Y., Chang, S.J.: Mediating effects of burnout in the association between emotional labor and turnover intention in Korean clinical nurses. Saf. Health Work 11(1), 88–96 (2020)
Kim, M.-N., Yoo, Y.-S., Cho, O.-H., Hwang, K.-H.: Emotional labor and burnout of public health nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic: mediating effects of perceived health status and perceived organizational support. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 19(1) (2022)
Omar, R., Hussein, A.: Stress-induced cognition among radiologic technologists in COVID-19 quarantine centers in Palestine. Clin. Psychol. Psychother. 28(6) (2021)
Zare, S., Kazemi, R., Izadi, A., Smith, A.: Beyond the outbreak of COVID-19: factors affecting burnout in nurses in Iran. Annals Global Health 87(1) (2021)
Khani, M.H., Nia, A.A.A.: The relationship between equity-perception and job burnout among Tehran urban rail operators (metro). Life Sci. J. Acta Zhengzhou University Overseas Ed. 10(1), 874–881 (2013)
Na, S.Y., Park, H.: The effect of nurse’s emotional labor on turnover intention: mediation effect of burnout and moderated mediation effect of authentic leadership. J. Korean Acad. Nurs. 49(3), 286–297 (2019)
Ma, X., et al.: Effect of organizational identity and job burnout on aberrant driving behavior of bus drivers. J. Highway Transport 33(6), 224–234 (2020). (in Chinese)
Li, B., Liu, J.X.: Research on preventive management of freeway traffic accident. In: Paper presented at the International Conference on Materials, Transportation and Environmental Engineering (CMTEE 2013), Taichung, Taiwan, 21–23 Aug 2013
Peng, M., Cheng, X., Cong, W., Yang, H., Zhang, H.: Experimental investigation on the characteristics and propagation of fire inside subway train. Tunnel. Underground Space Technol. 107, 103632 (2021)
Cohen, M.R., Pickar, D., Dubois, M.: The role of the endogenous opioid system in the human stress response. Psychiatric Clin. North Am. 6(3), 457–471 (1983)
Yang, T.-z., Huang, H.-t.: An epidemiological study on stress among urban residents in social transition period. Chin. J. Epidemiol. (9), 11–15 (2003)
Li, C., Shi, K., Luo, Z.: Work-family conflict and job burnout of doctors and nurses. Chin. Mental Health J. (2003)
Carbon, C.C.: Wearing face masks strongly confuses counterparts in reading emotions. Front. Psychol. 11 (2020)
Acknowledgements
Yao Fu and Ranran Li contributed equally to the writing of this paper. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant NO. 52072320)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Fu, Y., Li, R., Zhang, J., Guo, Z., Feng, G. (2022). Social Exposure and Burnout During the Pandemic: An Investigation on Three Different Positions of Frontline Metro Staffs. In: Harris, D., Li, WC. (eds) Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13307. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06086-1_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06086-1_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-06085-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-06086-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)