Balancing Work and Home

How Job and Home Demands Are Related to Burnout

Peeters, Maria C. W.
Montgomery, Anthony J.
Bakker, Arnold B.
Schaufeli, Wilmar B.

¹Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands
²Department of Economics, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece.

³Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Maria C. W. Peeters, Utrecht University, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, P.O. Box 80140, 3508 TC Utrecht, the Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected].

International Journal of Stress Management 12(1):p 43-61, February 2005.

The aim of the present study was to make a clear distinction between work and home domains in the explanation of burnout. First, a 3-factor structure of job and home demands was hypothesized, consisting of quantitative demands, emotional demands, and mental demands. Next, a model was tested that delineates how demands in both life domains are related to occupational burnout through work-home interference (WHI) and home-work interference (HWI). In doing so, the partial mediating role of WHI and HWI was examined. Consistent with hypotheses, empirical support was found for the 3-factor structure of both job and home demands as well as for the partial mediating effects of both WHI and HWI. Job demands and home demands appeared to have a direct and indirect effect (through WHI and HWI, respectively) on burnout.