The Mediating Effect of Work-Life Balance between Job Pressure and Depression Among Local-Based Platform Workers in South Korea

Background and Purpose :
The number of platform workers in South Korea has sharply increased during COVID-19 and is estimated to be 2,920,000 persons in 2022, which represents an approximately 32.9% increase compared to 2,200,000 in 2021. Favorable accounts of platform work stress autonomy and flexibility, conditions that tend to be associated with improved well-being, while critics highlight that platform workers are more likely to be exposure to job insecurity, unpredictable work schedules, and low wages, poor work conditions. Especially, it is noteworthy that they are vulnerable to job pressure such as feel overwhelmed by the amount of work to do, excessive job demands for work hours, and work on too many tasks at the same time. There are previous evidences that job pressure may interfere work-life balance, ultimately leading to depression among platform workers. However, to date, South Korean government has mainly focused on extension of employment insurance coverage for platform workers and there has been few concerns on the relationships among their job pressure, work-life balance and depression. Accordingly, this study aimed to examine the relationships between job pressure and depression and the mediation effect of work-life balance between the two variables among platform workers. These findings will provide meaningful implication for the future health challenges posed by platform work in a post-pandemic economy.

Methods :
Data and samples: Using purposive sampling, we conducted an online survey on platform workers. aged > 18 nationwide and 687 platform workers were included in the final analysis. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of OOO University. Three out of four participants was male (75.8%) and the mean age was 43.7 years.

Measures: Depression was measured using PHQ-9. Job pressure and work-life balance were assessed using 3-item Likert scale (Narisada, 2020) and 29-item Likert scale(Kim and Park, 2008), respectively. Control variables included gender, age, education, marital status, income. Model 4 of Andrew Hayes' (2013) PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to analyze mediation with bootstrapping.

Results :
The direct effect of job pressure on depression was significant (b = .350, p<.001) and the mediation effect of work-life balance in the relationship between job pressure and depression was significant (b = .342, CI [.2542, .4390]) as well. Thus, the findings showed that job pressure influenced not only directly but also indirectly through work-life balance on depression of platform workers.

Conclusion and Implications :
Our findings demonstrate that job pressure influenced directly on depression and work-life balance mediated the relationship between job pressure and depression. These findings provide implications for promoting varied efforts not only to reduce job pressure due to working conditions such as excessive workload, time constraints, and multi-tasking, but also to improve mental health and balance work and life among platform workers in South Korea.