Relationship between Coping Strategies and Burnout among Health and Safety Workers in an Algerian Refinery: The Moderating Role of COVID-19 Threat Perception

Abstract

The current study examined the association between coping strategies and job burnout among health and safety workers of Algerian petroleum refinery, exploring the moderating effect of COVID-19 threat perception. A cross-sectional study was conducted using a self-administrated structured questionnaire between August 2020 and September 2020 among 100 health and safety workers of an Algerian petroleum refinery. Correlations and Moderated linear regressions were used to analyze the data via SPSS V26 and process macro V3.5.3. Results were significant at CI=0.95 and p ≤0.05. The findings indicate that higher problem-focused strategies have been linked to reduced levels of burnout among health and safety workers (B= -4.225, SE= 1.262, p= .001). In contrast, emotion-focused strategies were not related significantly to burnout. COVID-19 threat perception acts as a moderator and mitigates the significant negative relationship between problem-focused strategies and job burnout (B= -1.1947; SE= .4720; p= .0130). This study contributes to new theoretical and empirical perspectives on the relevance of effective coping strategies to tackle burnout at the organizational and individual levels during the COVID-19 pandemic.