Survey reveals perceived organizational support decreases compassion fatigue in kindergarten teachers, highlighting professional identity and emotional intelligence's roles.
Kindergarten teachers are vulnerable to compassion fatigue, which threatens their physical and mental health. Drawing upon the compassion fatigue model, this study aims to explore the impact of perceived organizational support (POS) on compassion fatigue, while examining the mediating effects of professional identity and emotional intelligence in this relationship. A convenience sampling method was used to conduct a questionnaire survey with 1104 kindergarten teachers from Henan, Shaanxi, Hubei, and Anhui Provinces in China. This study utilized a general information questionnaire, a POS scale, a professional identity scale, an emotional intelligence scale, and a compassion fatigue scale to construct and test a chain mediation model. The results showed that (1) POS, professional identity, emotional intelligence, and compassion fatigue, were significantly correlated in pairs, and (2) POS can not only directly affect compassion fatigue, but also affect compassion fatigue through three indirect effects, namely, the separate mediating effect of professional identity and emotional intelligence (mediating effect size − 0.16, -0.24, respectively), and the chain mediating effect of professional identity → emotional intelligence (mediating effect size − 0.09). This study reveals that POS is negatively associated with compassion fatigue, and professional identity and emotional intelligence play a chain mediating role in this relationship. Kindergarten administrators should focus on creating supportive organizational environments, enhancing teachers' professional identity, and improve their emotional intelligence to alleviate compassion fatigue among kindergarten teachers.
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Cai et al. (2025) studied this question.