This study investigates the relationship between Chinese employees’ attitudes toward the newly announced delayed retirement policy and their work engagement, with a particular focus on age-based heterogeneity. It further examines the mediating role of mental health and the moderating role of automation fear in this relationship.
Data were drawn from the 2024 Guangzhou Enterprise Employee Survey (n = 6,198), conducted three months after the policy announcement. OLS regression, mediation analysis and moderated mediation analysis were employed, with controls for individual, job, and firm-level characteristics.
Opposition to the delayed retirement policy was significantly associated with lower work engagement, with the negative association strongest among younger employees. A significant indirect association through mental health was observed, and this association was stronger at higher levels of automation fear.
The findings suggest that delayed retirement should be managed as a psychologically consequential workforce transition, with greater attention to employees’ mental health, automation fear and the vulnerability of younger workers in order to sustain work engagement.
This study broadens the contextual application of the health-impairment logic of the JD-R framework by linking employees’ attitudes toward a macro-level institutional reform to their motivation at work. It shows that the negative association between policy opposition and work engagement extends across age groups and is stronger among younger employees than among older employees. It further identifies a significant indirect association through mental health that becomes stronger as automation fear increases.
