How research stress influences academic productivity: the mediating role of academic resilience and the moderating roles of work and family support

Research stress is a pervasive challenge for early-career faculty in highly competitive academic environments, yet its psychological mechanisms and boundary conditions in shaping scholarly productivity remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on Conservation of Resources theory and social support perspectives, this study develops and tests a dual-moderated mediation model in which academic resilience mediates the relationship between research stress and scholarly productivity, while family support and work support function as moderators at different stages of this process. Survey data were collected from 838 early-career faculty members at Chinese universities and analyzed using structural equation modeling with bias-corrected bootstrap procedures. Results indicate that research stress is positively associated with both academic resilience and scholarly productivity, academic resilience significantly mediates the association between research stress and productivity, family support strengthens the path from research stress to academic resilience, and work support enhances the positive effect of academic resilience on scholarly productivity. These findings elucidate the psychological processes through which early-career faculty sustain academic productivity under stress and highlight the critical role of coordinated work and family support in amplifying the productivity benefits of academic resilience.