Examination of the use of voluntary solitude of hotel managers as a recovery strategy from work stress

Even though the importance of recovery strategies for addressing work stress has been stressed in the hospitality industry, up to now, far too little attention has been paid to how hotel managers manage their work stress. Additionally, despite the fact that voluntary solitude can effectively reduce stress and improve mental health in the literature, surprisingly, voluntary solitude is seldom studied, and it is unclear to what extent of solitude role in recovering from work stress. Accordingly, this study aimed to identify the phenomenon of psychological strain development by hotel managers and examine the impact of voluntary solitude in recovering from work stress in the hotel industry based on the JD-R and COR theories. Target population was hotel managers in the United States, and the data were collected via TurkPrime using a convenience sampling method. A total of 580 valid responses were collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results found that hotel managers’ job demands had direct impacts on their need for recovery and fatigue as well as an indirect impact on fatigue via the need for recovery, while their job demands were not significantly related to their work engagement. Also, need for recovery of managers resulting from job demands brought their desire to use voluntary solitude as a recovery strategy from work stress. Given no significant and direct relationship between job demands and solitude, the relationship was mediated by need for recovery. Furthermore, using voluntary solitude as a recovery approach decreased their fatigue level and increased work engagement. In examining the proposed mediating effects of solitude, this study revealed that the impact of need for recovery on fatigue was mediated by solitude. The findings suggested that the psychological strain process was able to develop when hotel managers could not have a chance to recharge their energies sufficiently. Moreover, the psychological strain development was able to be mitigated by using voluntary solitude as an internal recovery strategy from work stress. In this regard, this study contributed to the hospitality literature by integrating the concept of voluntary solitude and the psychological strain development process resulting from work stress.