“My space”: A moderated mediation model of the effect of architectural and experienced privacy and workspace personalization on emotional exhaustion at work

This research examined a model in which experience of privacy served as a mediator between architectural privacy and emotional exhaustion in the workplace and personalization of one's workspace served as a moderator, mitigating the adverse effect of low levels of experienced privacy at work on emotional exhaustion. The results generally supported our hypotheses by indicating that in its role as a mediator, experience of privacy is initially affected by architectural privacy and its effect on emotional exhaustion is contingent on (moderated by) personalization of the employee's personal work area (i.e., quantity of personal items in one's work area). As expected, higher personalization at work reduced the adverse effect of the experience of low levels of privacy on emotional exhaustion. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.