Background

An increasing age of the workforce necessitates a better understanding of age-related differences in emotions at work to inform age-inclusive workplace policies and practices. This review critically evaluates how age relates to emotion-regulatory strategies at work (emotional labour and emotion regulation), emotional work demands, and associated health and work outcomes.

Methods

Following PRISMA guidelines, we systematically reviewed studies examining relationships between age, emotion-regulatory strategies, emotional work demands, and health/work outcomes. A completed PRISMA 2020 checklist is provided in the Supplementary Materials. Twenty-six studies were included and synthesized narratively.

Results

Across studies, no generalisable pattern of age-related differences emerged. While several studies reported age differences in the associations between emotion-regulatory strategies and health or work outcomes, often indicating comparatively more favourable outcomes among older workers, these findings were not consistently observed across studies, with some studies reporting reversed or null effects. Moreover, studies reporting age differences varied in what aspect these differences reflected, including variation in the frequency or type of strategies used, as well as differences in how these strategies related to outcomes across age. Similarly, associations between emotional work demands and outcomes varied by age in some studies but did not follow a uniform pattern. Overall, the evidence suggests that while age-related differences in these associations are sometimes observed, they are inconsistent, not systematically associated with advantage or disadvantage for any age group, and their underlying mechanisms remain unclear.

Conclusion

Age did not emerge as a robust determinant of how emotion-regulatory strategies or emotional work demands relate to health and work outcomes. The findings underscore the need for more integrative, theoretically grounded, and methodologically rigorous approaches that better account for how age, emotional work demands, regulation, and outcomes are linked, while addressing key conceptual and design challenges.

Trial registration

PROSPERO CRD42022300000, published on 10 May 2022.

This study examines how emotional demands and surface acting contribute to burnout and mental wellbeing among professionals in healthcare, care, and service roles. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with 1,506 participants involved in frequent patient, care-receiver, or customer interactions. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), we tested a serial mediation model. Surface acting mediated the relationship between emotional demands and burnout, defined as exhaustion and disengagement. In turn, these burnout dimensions mediated a negative association with mental wellbeing. These effects were consistent across professional groups, indicating the widespread impact of emotional demands and surface acting across occupations. We found no significant linear or curvilinear age moderation effects in the relationships between emotional demands and surface acting, nor between surface acting and burnout. Only workers aged 60+ showed a slightly stronger reliance on surface acting in response to perceived (but not contact-related) emotional demands compared to those aged 50–59. The absence of broader age effects suggests that emotional demands and surface acting contribute to burnout and mental wellbeing similarly across ages. These findings underscore the importance of recognising emotional demands as key occupational hazards affecting workers across professions and throughout the working lifespan.

In an experimental simulation employing 123 undergraduates the effect of different travel modes on satisfaction with travel, mood after the day traveled, and satisfaction with the day as a whole were assessed for the work commute by car or bus. Car was rated higher than bus on satisfaction with travel. This mode difference was accounted for by ratings of the mode-specific attributes fun, lifestyle match, and feeling secure for which car was rated higher than bus. It was also shown that satisfaction with travel partially mediated the effect of travel mode on mood. Satisfaction with the day as a whole was however not influenced by travel mode when controlling for the mood effect of travel.

Subjective well-being (SWB) that includes individuals' cognitive and affective evaluations of life in general is proposed to be a more appropriate measure capturing the benefits individuals derive from travel improvements. We develop and test a measure of travel-related SWB, the nine item self-report satisfaction with travel scale (STS). In a survey of 155 undergraduates, STS, mood ratings, and ratings of SWB were collected for three hypothetical weekdays differing in travel mode, travel time, access to bus stops, and daily activity agenda. The results showed that STS is reliable and differentiates between changes in travel conditions. STS, mood, and to some extent SWB were shown to be affected by travel mode (bus vs. car), travel time, access to bus stops, and the number of activities in the daily agenda.

In order to investigate how public transport should be improved to appear attractive to car users, this study develops and tests an internet-based experimental simulation of travel mode choice dependent on the complexity of daily activity agendas. The results for 75 students taking part in the experimental simulation are compared to the results of a survey of another 69 students taking part in a pilot study. Students in both groups were frequent car users. The results of the survey showed that higher costs of car use and greater perceived difficulty to use public transport decreased intention to use the bus for the commute to the university. In the experimental simulation high access to bus stops increased bus use and reduced car use but less for a busy daily activity agenda when the car-use costs are low. The results highlight the importance of focusing on tradeoffs between increasing car-use costs and improvement of public transport.

A survey is reported that requested work-commuters by car to state reasons that would make them reduce car use for the work commute. All participants (n = 1218) were employed by companies located in the center of a medium-size Swedish city (pop. 82,000). Among 76% of the car users (n = 602) who stated any reasons, the most frequent were improved public transport and work from home some days. Shorter travel times, an increased frequency of service and lower fares were the most frequent reasons for increasing public transport use.

As public transport companies market new self-service technologies, it has become increasingly important to understand the factors affecting the users’ perceived service quality of these services. Electronic Service Quality has been broadly defined as encompassing all phases of a customer’s interaction with a website. The E-S-QUAL scale comprises four dimensions. This article investigates the importance of three of the suggested quality dimensions (efficiency, system availability, and fulfillment) for overall satisfaction when using information-based websites. A survey was conducted with respondents being asked to use and evaluate an existing website delivering public transport information in their region. The results revealed that efficiency (addressing the ease and speed of using the site) was most important for overall satisfaction. Furthermore, it is concluded that a modified E-S-QUAL scale is appropriate for this purpose as it was possible to adapt it to a pure service-related website.