AI awareness and the breakdown of daily recovery: a spillover pathway to work–family strain

TL;DR

This study shows how awareness of AI at work can cause stress that spills into family life, but personal resilience can help reduce this effect.

Contribution

The study introduces a new pathway linking AI awareness to work–family conflict through impaired psychological detachment.

Findings

AI awareness increases work–family conflict by reducing psychological detachment.

Trait resilience moderates the negative effect of AI awareness on work–family conflict.

Psychological detachment is a key recovery mechanism in the AI awareness–WFC relationship.

Abstract

The growing adoption of AI in the workplace has emerged as a distinct occupational stressor, influencing employees’ psychological states and extending its effects into their family lives—a dimension rarely addressed by prior research.

Drawing on data collected from a final valid sample of 119 hotel frontline employees over 10 consecutive workdays via experience sampling (yielding 965 daily observations), this study investigates how AI awareness leads to work–family conflict (WFC). Specifically, we examine the mediating role of psychological detachment and the moderating function of trait resilience.

Our findings demonstrate that AI awareness increases WFC by impairing employees’ ability to detach from work. However, high levels of trait resilience reduce this negative pathway, supporting the buffering effect of personal resources.

This study advances the literature on AI awareness by uncovering how it shapes employees’ work–family conflict and by positioning psychological detachment as a crucial recovery mechanism in this process.

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