The relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction of female university teachers in China: A moderated mediating model

Work and family are two of the most important parts in one's life. Individuals cannot fulfill their work requirements and family responsibilities at the same time, so they are faced with the dilemma of timing and role conflict. Based on the conservation theory, this study explored the relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction in 422 female university teachers in China, and proposed a moderating mediation model to examine the mediating role of job burnout and the moderating role of perceived organizational support. The results show that work-family conflict has a significant negative predictive effect on job satisfaction; job burnout fully mediates the relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction; perceived organizational support moderates the relationship between work-family conflict and job burnout, and the stronger the perceived organizational support, the weaker the negative predictive effect of work-family conflicts on job satisfaction.


INTRODUCTION
In recent years, with the continuous advancement of education reform, China's higher education system has also put forward higher requirements for college teachers, which makes college teachers, have to devote a lot of time and energy to teaching, research and management (Wang et al., 2019). However, influenced by traditional social gender concepts and limited personal energy, female teachers in colleges not only need to take responsibility for teaching and educating, but also need to devote a lot of time to family construction (such as housework, child-rearing, filial piety, etc.) (Allen et al., 2013). As a result, female teachers in colleges face higher role conflict, which means that they need to try to balance the conflict between work and family . Work-family conflict, as an important form of interrole conflict, refers to the fact that an individual's role at work (or at home) makes it difficult for him to play his role at home (or at work). Or the role requirements in one field interfere with the execution of roles in another field (Erdamar and Demirel, 2014), and excessive work-family *Corresponding author. E-mail: m.jiang125@gmail.com.
Author(s) agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License conflict level will seriously damage the physical and mental health of individuals and weaken work motivation (Allen et al., 2000;Netemeyer, 1996). Many scholars have paid attention to the relationship between workfamily conflict and job satisfaction of female college teachers. However, studies analyzing the internal mechanism of the relationship between the two are scarce.
Therefore, this study uses an online questionnaire survey to investigate female teachers in some colleges in China so as to further explore the relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction of female college teachers and its internal mechanism (the mediating role of job burnout and the moderating role of perceived organizational support), and intends to provide targeted suggestions and measures to improve the job satisfaction of female teachers in colleges by constructing a moderating mediation model.

Theoretical deduction
Conservation of Resources (COR) was put forward by Hobfoll (1989). The basic assumption of COR theory is that individuals always try their best to obtain new resources and preserve existing resources. Resources include two aspects; on the one hand, they are mainly material resources. Including rights, remuneration, time, etc.; On the other hand, it is character resources, including self-esteem, efficacy and so on (Hobfoll et al., 2018). When female university teachers are faced with high-intensity work that takes up too much time, which hinders them from fulfilling their family obligations, or when they are unable to complete their work with due diligence because of too many family affairs, it is easy to lead to two-way conflicts between work and family (Hobfoll, 2011). At this time, female university teachers need to mobilize their existing personal resources and self-control resources to deal with various problems brought about by the conflict. If female university teachers frequently organize or self-intervene in order to improve their work or life, it will eventually lead to negative emotions and job dissatisfaction. However, if the organization provides some material help or spiritual support to female university teachers, it can greatly reduce the adverse physical or psychological effects of female university teachers caused by stress, and alleviate the negative consequences of female university teachers such as job burnout or stress caused by resource depletion (Tran, 2022).

Work-family conflict and job satisfaction
Work-family conflict is a kind of role conflict from the field of work and family life, that is to say, because of participating in family (work) activities, the role and time become more difficult (Panda et al., 2022). Work-family conflict is bidirectional, that is, work interferes with family or family interferes with work. Work-family interference is due to excessive work affairs, which makes it difficult for individuals to fulfill their family responsibilities and obligations, while family interference with work is due to family needs, which affects work. The two are a conflict relationship caused by the imbalance between work and family (Lim et al., 2021). A large number of studies have confirmed that work-family conflict is associated with a variety of negative outcome variables in the work and family domains, such as turnover intention, reduced work and life satisfaction, and depressive symptoms (Torp et al., 2018). The conflict of family life brought by work will reduce the level of individual's devotion to work and job satisfaction, that is, work-family conflict will negatively affect individual's job satisfaction (Mumu et al., 2021). The analysis also shows that work-family conflict is an effective factor to predict individual job satisfaction (Selvarajan et al., 2019).
Most scholars believe that there is a correlation between work-family conflict and job satisfaction, and some scholars study the relationship between workfamily conflict and job satisfaction as a whole (Panda et al., 2022). Work-family conflict and family-work conflict are negatively correlated with job satisfaction. The study shows that there is a negative correlation between familywork conflict and job satisfaction, and the more attention teachers' pay to work and family, the lower their job satisfaction (Mumu, et al., 2021). There is a significant correlation between behavioral conflict and job satisfaction (Dodanwala and Shrestha, 2021). Therefore, this study infers that the higher the level of work-family conflict of female university teachers, the lower their job satisfaction. Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed in this study: H1: The work-family conflict of female university teachers in China has a significant negative impact on job satisfaction.

Mediating effect of job burnout
Work-family conflict may affect job satisfaction through specific ways. Job burnout, as an extreme psychological state of individuals, also known as job burnout, refers to the physical and psychological state of individuals who are physically and mentally exhausted, tired of work, depressed, creative exhaustion, reduced sense of value and unable to release their potential l (Madigan and Kim, 2021). It mainly includes three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, dehumanization and low sense of accomplishment (Maslach and Jackson, 1981). Specifically, emotional exhaustion refers to the individual in a state of extreme fatigue, loss of enthusiasm for work, lack of vitality; De-humanization refers to treating the working object with a cold, negative, distant, negative and insensitive attitude in the work. Low sense of achievement refers to the individual's reduced tendency to evaluate the meaning and value of self (Wang and Hu, 2012). This negative emotional state reflects the individual's view of work, which affects the individual's job satisfaction.
It is found that job burnout is directly related to job satisfaction. Evidence from cross-sectional studies shows that job burnout is associated with absenteeism, turnover, low productivity, low job satisfaction, and low job engagement (Golembiewski et al., 1987), in other words, there is a significant negative correlation between job burnout and job satisfaction, which means that the higher the job burnout is, the lower the job satisfaction will be (Visser et al., 2003).
Through a one-year survey of junior high school teachers, Li (2019) found that job burnout was a significant predictor of teachers' perceived higher workload and reached the same conclusion as Visser. Similarly, Abate et al. (2018) also found that job burnout is a longitudinal factor predicting individual job satisfaction. In this regard, the job demand-resource model (JD-R) points out that higher job burnout will lead to the increase of individual's job stress, resulting in the loss of psychological resources, which will affect individual's motivation and behavior, and ultimately lead to the decline of self-efficacy, disengagement from work, and lower job satisfaction (Bakker et al., 2003). In addition, other studies have found that work-family conflict is closely related to job burnout. The results show that work-family conflict can lead to job burnout, which will make employees have negative emotions and affect their work efficiency, and low work efficiency will in turn lead to higher work-family conflict and job burnout, thus forming a vicious circle (Bakker et al., 2003). The crossinfluence model proposed by Frone et al. (1992) holds that work-family conflict will cause psychological distress in the field of work and life, resulting in anxiety, depression, fatigue, incompetence and other feelings, while persistent negative emotions will cause emotional exhaustion. According to the theory of resource conservation, when employees are faced with conflicts between work and family, they will feel the depletion of physical, emotional and psychological resources (Wei and Ni, 2020). If they do not take actions to protect or reset these resources, job burnout will occur (Hobfoll, 1989;Wright and Cropanzano, 1998), thereby reducing individual job satisfaction (Abate, et al., 2018). To sum up, job burnout is likely to be the key variable of work-family conflict affecting job satisfaction. Based on this, this study assumes that job burnout is a mediating variable between work-family conflict and job satisfaction.
H2: Job burnout plays a mediating role in the negative Su and Jiang 227 impact of work-family conflict on job satisfaction.

Moderating effect of perceived organizational support
A good organization is an important driving force to support individual development. Perceived organizational support refers to an individual's overall view of the organization's emphasis on his own contribution and concern for his well-being (Kurtessis et al., 2017). According to the theory of resource conservation, when people face stressful events, they will mobilize resources to improve the situation, thus offsetting the continuing challenges and reducing the negative impact of stress (Eisenberger et al., 2020). The loss or acquisition of resources is an important mechanism driving the stress response. Therefore, when the school's work requirements for teachers are too high or the work resources do not match the work requirements, the work pressure of teachers will be greater, resulting in work tension, negative idleness and other symptoms (Ferreira et al., 2019). But at this time, if the organization can provide some material help or spiritual support to employees, it can greatly reduce the physical or psychological adverse effects of stress on employees (Yew and Ramos, 2019). Supervisor support can greatly reduce the level of job burnout, especially in the two subdimensions of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization of job burnout. Previous studies have shown that perceived organizational support is beneficial to reduce the degree of job burnout (Kelly et al., 2021). Perceived organizational support is a buffer of stress, the individuals who feel emotional and material support are healthier than those who feel less support, perceived organizational support has a significant impact on job burnout, and the individuals who feel perceived organizational support are less likely to be emotionally exhausted (Shen et al., 2014).
Similar studies have also found that a high degree of organizational help and support is effective in alleviating teachers' job stress and job burnout, and teachers working in a supportive environment generally produce less job burnout (Sari and Seniati, 2020). Perceived organizational support belongs to the category of resources. When individuals feel the perceived organizational support, it increases the value of resources, causes positive emotions, alleviates emotional exhaustion, and thus regulates the relationship between family-work conflict and job burnout . Therefore, this study infers that perceived organizational support may moderate the relationship between workfamily conflict and job burnout among female university teachers. Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed in this study: H3: Perceived organizational support moderates the relationship among work-family conflict, job burnout and job satisfaction of Chinese female university teachers.
Based on the above discussion, this study constructed a mediation model with regulation. It mainly includes the following three purposes: First, to examine the predictive effect of work-family conflict on job satisfaction of female college teachers; Second, to investigate whether job burnout plays a mediating role in the relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction. Third, to investigate the moderating effect of perceived organizational support in the mediating model.

Participants
This study used a convenient sampling method to conduct an online questionnaire survey among female college teachers in China. A total of 422 questionnaires were collected, and 410 valid questionnaires were retained, with an effective rate of 97.16%, excluding invalid questionnaires with too short answer time and obviously unreasonable answers. Among them, there were 127 people under 30 years old, accounting for 31%, 228 people between 30 and 40 years old, accounting for 55.6%, 47 people between 41 and 50 years old and accounting for 11.5%, 8 people over 50 years old and accounting for 2%. About their fertility status: 77 (18.8%) people who had not yet given birth, 265 people who had one child (64.6%), 66 (16.1%) people who had two children and 2 (0.4%) people who had three children. There are 133 undergraduates, accounting for 32.4%, 216 masters, accounting for 52.7%, and 61 doctors, accounting for 14.9%. There are 51 people with ungraded professional titles, accounting for 12.4%, 192 people with junior professional titles, accounting for 46.8%, 109 people with intermediate professional titles and accounting for 26.6%, and 58 people with senior professional titles and accounting for 14.1%. There are 103 people with working life of less than 5 years, accounting for 25.1%, 213 people with working life of 5 to 10 years, accounting for 52%, 71 people with working time of 11 to 20 years and accounting for 17.3%, and 23 people with the working time of more than 20 years and accounting for 5.6%.

Work-family conflict scale
The Work-Family Conflict Scale (WFCS) developed by Netemeyer et al. (1996) was used to assess the extent of work-family conflict among female college teachers in China. The scale consists of 10 items, including two dimensions of work-family conflict and familywork conflict. Likert 5 points are used, ranging from "1" for "strongly disagree" to "5" for "strongly agree". The higher the score, the higher the work-family conflict. In this study, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.881, and the Cronbach's alpha coefficients of work-family conflict and family-work conflict were 0.871 and 0.812, respectively.

Job satisfaction scale
The Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire, MSQ) developed by Weiss et al. (1967) was used to evaluate the job satisfaction of female college teachers in China. The scale consists of 20 items, including three dimensions of intrinsic satisfaction, extrinsic satisfaction and general satisfaction. Likert 5 points are used, ranging from "1" for "very dissatisfied" to "5" for "very satisfied". The higher scores indicate the higher job satisfaction. In this study, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.919, and the Cronbach's alpha coefficients of internal satisfaction and external satisfaction were 0.856 and 0.858, respectively. Maslach and Jackson (1981)'s Job Burnout Inventory (maslach burnout inventory, MBI) was used to assess the job burnout of female college teachers in China. The scale consists of 15 items, including three dimensions of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and low sense of accomplishment. Likert 5 points are used, ranging from "1" for "strongly disagree" to "5" for "strongly agree". The higher scores indicate the higher job burnout. In this study, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.888, and the Cronbach's alpha coefficients of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and low sense of accomplishment were 0.891, 0.821 and 0.795, respectively.

Perceived organizational support scale
The perceived organizational support scale (POSS) developed by Settoon et al. (1996) was used to assess the perceived organizational support of female college teachers in China. The scale contains seven items. Likert 5 points were used, ranging from "1" for "strongly disagree" to "5" for "strongly agree". The higher scores indicate the greater sense of organizational support. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale in this study was 0.897.

Statistical processing
SPSS 25.0 and PROCESS statistical software were used for data entry and statistical analysis, and Pearson correlation analysis, Harman single factor test, mediating effect analysis and moderating effect analysis were used for statistical analysis.

Common method bias test
This study used a self-report questionnaire to collect data, and the results may be affected by common methodological bias. In order to minimize its impact, we have carried out program control in the process of data collection, such as anonymous testing and reverse scoring of some items. In addition, a Harman univariate test was performed in the subsequent data analysis to examine whether there was a common methodological bias problem (Zhou and Long, 2004). The results show that the eigenvalues of nine factors are greater than 1, and the explanation rate of the first factor is 17.549%, which is far below the critical standard of 40% (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Therefore, the common method bias in this study is not serious.

Correlation analysis
The results of descriptive statistics and correlation analysis of each variable are shown in Table 1. Workfamily conflict is negatively correlated with job satisfaction and perceived organizational support, and positively correlated with job burnout. Job satisfaction was negatively correlated with job burnout and positively correlated with perceived organizational support. Job burnout was negatively correlated with perceived organizational support. Based on this, we will continue to examine the mediating role of job burnout in the relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction and the moderating role of perceived organizational support.

Testing the mediated mediation model
Firstly, the mediating effect of job burnout was tested by using Model 4 in SPSS Process plug-in provided by Hayes under the control of age, fertility, education, job title and working years. The results showed that (Table 2), work-family conflict did not significantly predict job satisfaction (β = -0.38, p > 0.05), work-family conflict significantly positively predicted job burnout (β = 0.56, p < 0.001), and job burnout significantly negatively predicted job satisfaction (β = -0.73, p < 0.001). The percentile Bootstrap method based on bias correction further found that job burnout played a full mediating role between work-family conflict and job satisfaction. According to Wen Zhong lin's research method (Wen and Ye, 2014), a * B and C 'had different signs, and the effect was | ab/C' | = 15.14%. Secondly, model 7 in Hayes procedure was used to test the moderating effect of perceived organizational support under the control of age, fertility, education, professional title and working years. The results showed ( Table 3) that in Equation 1, job burnout significantly predicted job satisfaction (β = -0.73, p < 0.001). In Equation 2, the interaction between work-family conflict and perceived organizational support negatively predicted job burnout (β = -0.08, p < 0.001). Therefore, work-family conflict, job burnout, job satisfaction and perceived organizational support constitute a moderating mediating effect model.
Finally, to better interpret the mediated mediation model, a simple slope analysis was performed (Figure 2). Figure 1 indicates that work-family conflict significantly predicted job burnout in low perceived organizational support (β = 0.04, t = 10.70, p < 0.001) and job satisfaction in high perceived organizational support (β = 0.04, t = 6.21, p < 0.001).

DISCUSSION
This study systematically examined the relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction of female college teachers, and the specific ways of effects  burnout and job satisfaction are moderating mediating models. The results show that work-family conflict has a significant negative predictive effect on job satisfaction, that is, the higher (lower) the work-family conflict of female college teachers, the lower (higher) their job satisfaction will be, which supports the previous research view that work-family conflict will significantly affect job satisfaction (Dodanwala and Shrestha, 2021; confirming that work-family conflict is an effective predictor of individual job satisfaction (Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran, 2005). However, work-family conflict does not directly affect job satisfaction, but has a negative impact on it through job burnout. At the same time, the relationship between work-family conflict and job burnout of female college teachers is moderated by perceived organizational support.
In the case of high perceived organizational support, the negative predictive effect of work-family conflict on job satisfaction of female college teachers will be weakened. That is to say, higher perceived organizational support has a buffer effect on lower job satisfaction caused by work-family conflict. This study reveals the mechanism of perceived organizational support and job burnout in the relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction of female college teachers, indicating that improving perceived organizational support has a positive significance in improving job burnout of female college teachers, and then improving their job satisfaction.

The relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction and the mediating role of job burnout among female college teachers
In a large number of previous studies, the results of the relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction are not consistent. Some results show that work-family conflict affects individual job satisfaction, while other studies suggest that there is no significant correlation between them (Carlson and Kacmar, 2000). This study confirms that work-family conflict has a significant negative predictive effect on job satisfaction among female college teachers. In addition, this study also found that job burnout plays a full mediating role between work-family conflict and job satisfaction of female college teachers. On the one hand, the level of job burnout of female college teachers will increase significantly with the increase of work-family conflict, which is consistent with previous theoretical models and research results (Butler, 1993;Frone et al., 1992), that is, work-family conflict is a key predictor of job burnout among female college teachers. According to the resource conservation theory, work-family conflict will lead to psychological distress of employees, resulting in emotional exhaustion and job burnout. In addition, according to the attribution theory, people often attribute conflicts and distress to work. And then take a passive and evasive attitude towards work (Zhan et al., 2023). On the other hand, job burnout is a significant negative predictor of job satisfaction, which is also consistent with previous studies and theoretical models (Golembiewski et al., 1987), that is, the higher the job burnout, the lower the job satisfaction will be (Visser et al., 2003). Job burnout is a predictor of individual job satisfaction, which affects job satisfaction by affecting job stress, psychological resources, motivation and self-efficacy (Bakker et al., 2003). At the same time, for female college teachers, work-family conflict mainly indirectly affects job satisfaction through job burnout. Compared with other practitioners, female college teachers are affected by traditional social gender concepts and limited personal energy, and bear higher work-family conflict (Forster, 2001), which will lead to higher levels of job burnout and physical and mental health crisis. Therefore, helping female college teachers to reduce the level of job burnout is helpful to improve their job satisfaction and physical and mental health.

Moderating effect of perceived organizational support
Perceived organizational support plays a moderating role in the relationship between work-family conflict and job burnout of female college teachers, and its effect occurs in the first half of the mediating path. When the perceived organizational support of female college teachers gets higher, the level of job burnout caused by work-family conflict will be reduced. This shows that improving the perceived organizational support of female college teachers is helpful to reduce their job burnout. High Perceived organizational support can convey a message to employees that the organization values employees' work efforts and is willing to reward them (Eisenberger et al., 1986), which can not only enhance employees' creativity, performance and job satisfaction, but also reduce the turnover intention, emotional exhaustion and low sense of accomplishment. As mentioned in previous studies, organizational support is conducive to reducing employees' work stress and stabilizing employees' emotions (Lingard and Francis, 2006). Employees are generally less likely to experience job burnout (Asad and Khan, 2003;Lee and Ashforth, 1996). Wang and Xu (2008) also believe that good perceived organizational support can effectively reduce teachers' job burnout in their research on primary and secondary school teachers. The results of this study are also consistent with the resource conservation theory, that is, for female college teachers, perceived organizational support is a kind of material or spiritual help, and it is an available resource to cope with pressure or challenges (Hobfoll, 1989). When they feel insufficient organizational support, their work pressure will increase, resulting in work tension, negative slack and other phenomena.
Therefore, this reminds us that we can reduce the job burnout of female teachers in colleges through this targeted way. Previous studies have shown that when college teachers receive development support from the organization, they will perceive the organization's recognition and expectation of personal value, resulting in a sense of organizational support (Lin, 2022). When the perceived organizational support is stronger, college teachers can experience the control and pleasure of their own behavior, so they are more willing to actively learn relevant knowledge for their own development and completion of work, and the activities that enhance the perceived organizational support include learning opportunities for teaching development, learning opportunities for academic development, and independent decision-making opportunities for career development etc. (Liu et al., 2018) which means that career development, employee benefits and training, and growth opportunities are the most important supportive HR practices (Allen et al., 2003;Meyer and Smith, 2000). Therefore, college teacher development centers should create a safe and comfortable environment for teachers, so that teachers are willing to seek help from teacher development centers when they are in trouble (Wei and Zhao, 2017). And need to actively respond to the demands of teachers, provide the required services, enable teachers to make suggestions, strengthen communication, reduce the mandatory pressure on teachers, and provide a fair atmosphere for the organization. Meanwhile, college leaders need to provide detailed leadership support, so as to enhance the sense of organizational support of college teachers (Lin, 2022), alleviate the level of job burnout and improve job performance and job satisfaction.

Research deficiency and prospect
Based on previous studies and theories, this study explored the relationship between work-family conflict and job satisfaction of female college teachers and its mechanism. The results show that work-family conflict has a significant negative predictive effect on job satisfaction, and work-family conflict of female college teachers affects their job satisfaction through job burnout, while perceived organizational support has a moderating effect on work-family conflict. The results have good theoretical and practical value to help female college teachers reduce job burnout and improve job satisfaction, and also provide a basis and inspiration for organizations to improve job performance and protect the physical and mental health of employees.
However, this study also has some shortcomings: Firstly, this study is a cross-sectional study, so it cannot examine the causal relationship between variables, and it is necessary to further explore the causal relationship between these variables through experiments or longitudinal studies in the future. Secondly, job satisfaction may also affect the work-family conflict of female college teachers to a certain extent, which needs to be further explored by follow-up studies using experimental or longitudinal research methods. Finally, this study focuses on the impact of external factors (work-family conflict, job burnout, perceived organizational support) on job satisfaction of female college teachers, while internal factors such as personality need to be further explored and verified in the future.