Abstract
Abstract
Burnout among academic advisors has become a growing concern in higher education institutions, largely due to sustained interpersonal demands, emotional labor, and increasing administrative pressures. Although prior research has established strong associations between job stressors and burnout, much of the existing literature relies on global assessments of job demands and overlooks the role of discrete, emotionally salient workplace events and the psychological processes through which their effects unfold. Drawing on Affective Events Theory (AET) and organizational support perspectives, the present study aims to develop and test a sequential affective–cognitive model explaining how student-related events contribute to burnout among academic advisors, and how perceived organizational support (POS) functions as a buffering contextual resource.
Specifically, the study proposes that student-related affective events (e.g., complaints, communication pressure, and emotionally demanding interactions) will elicit daily negative affect, which will subsequently foster work-related rumination, a form of persistent cognitive activation that interferes with psychological recovery. This sequential process is expected to culminate in emotional exhaustion, the core dimension of burnout. In addition, the model examines whether perceived organizational support weakens both the immediate emotional impact of student-related events and their indirect effects on burnout through negative affect and rumination.
The research will be conducted using a time-separated quantitative design among academic advisors employed at a university. Data will be collected across multiple temporal frames to capture proximal affective reactions, subsequent cognitive processes, and accumulated burnout outcomes. Established and validated instruments will be used to measure student-related affective events, negative affect, work-related rumination, perceived organizational support, and emotional exhaustion. The hypothesized relationships will be tested using structural equation modeling, including analyses of sequential mediation and moderated indirect effects with bootstrapped confidence intervals.
By adopting an event-based perspective, this study is expected to contribute to organizational behavior and higher education research by clarifying the affective and cognitive mechanisms through which student interactions lead to burnout and by highlighting the protective role of organizational support. Practically, the findings are expected to inform institutional strategies aimed at reducing burnout risk among academic advisors in emotionally demanding roles.