After-hours work-related technology use, work-to-family interference, and exhaustion among Korean wage workers: gender patterns in associations and covariate-standardized levels

초록

Introduction: After-hours work-related technology use may erode boundaries between work and private life. We examined whether after-hours technology use was associated with exhaustion through work-to-family interference (WIF), whether the modeled associations differed by gender, and whether men and women had different covariate-standardized outcome levels. Methods: Pooled cross-sectional data were obtained from 56,640 wage workers in the 6th (2020-2021) and 7th (2023) Korean Working Conditions Survey. Primary analyses used wave-specific standardized survey weights, probability-weighted linear regression with HC3 robust standard errors, and 5,000 multiplier-bootstrap replications. Results: After-hours technology use was associated with higher WIF (B = 0.064, 95% CI 0.053-0.074; standardized beta = 0.10) and exhaustion in the total-association model (B = 0.042, 95% CI 0.031-0.052; beta = 0.07). WIF was associated with exhaustion (B = 0.329, 95% CI 0.314-0.344; beta = 0.34), and the remaining direct association was small (B = 0.021; beta = 0.03). The technology-by-gender interactions in the WIF and total-association models and the gender difference in the conditional indirect association met the stated post hoc equivalence criteria; the other path interactions were not statistically significant. Indirect associations were 0.021 (95% CI 0.017-0.025) for men and 0.018 (95% CI 0.014-0.021) for women; the difference was -0.003 (95% CI -0.008 to 0.002). After standardization to a common distribution of measured paid-work characteristics, women had higher exhaustion than men (difference = 0.087, 95% CI 0.066-0.109). Exploratory categorical analyses suggested a localized, non-monotonic gender difference at several-times-per-month use; this pattern was observed in both waves without detectable wave heterogeneity. Discussion: The associations were small in absolute magnitude, and the cross-sectional design precludes causal interpretation.

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