Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt (1984) studied job insecurity for the first time. They believed that job insecurity is the concern of employees about the possible loss of continuity of a particular job in the future, including the permanent loss of the job itself and the loss of some positive or essential characteristics of the job. The concept of job insecurity is future-oriented and reflects a prediction of the future. Therefore, the job insecurity studied in this paper is not the actual loss of job or job characteristics, but the attitude and reaction of employees to the possible “loss of job or job characteristics” in the future (Boswell et al., 2014). This kind of job insecurity often leads to different degrees of psychological stress (Naswall et al., 2005) and is one of the most prominent social psychological risks in the workplace (Jiang and Lavaysse, 2018).

At present, there are many kinds of research on proactive behavior, but there is no consensus on its conceptual connotation. Proactive behavior refers to the spontaneous and prospective behavior in which employees take positive actions to change or improve themselves and their situation (Parker et al., 2006). The definition of proactive behavior is not limited to in-role behavior, but also includes out-of-role behavior, such as responsible behavior, voice behavior, job shaping, and construct social networks, etc (Parker and Collins, 2010). The most important characteristic that distinguishes proactive behavior from other behaviors is its characteristics of spontaneity, foresight, and transformation. Therefore, the main research on proactive behavior is why individuals want to take the initiative to improve themselves and the environment, improve and impact individuals and organizations, and so on.

This study discusses the “cause-driven” mechanism of job insecurity on proactive behavior starting from the driving mechanism of proactive behavior. According to the planned behavior theory, behavioral intention is the best way to predict and explain individual behavior, which can directly affect individual behavior (Ajzen, 1991). The behavioral intention here is consistent with the individual motivation, which will lead the individual to take the corresponding behavior to achieve the ultimate goal. When employees perceive that their future jobs or specific job characteristics are “threatened,” some employees believe that they can reduce the possibility of losing their jobs or job characteristics in the future by actively improving themselves and the situation. To reduce job insecurity, employees may try their best to show proactive behaviors to improve work performance, increase their weight in the superior leadership and organization, reflect their value, and reduce such “threats” (Lam et al., 2015). That is to say, job insecurity may motivate employees to exert their subjective initiative and promote their proactive behavior. However, when some employees faced with the pressure that they may lose their jobs or specific work characteristics in the future, on the one hand, they are worried about more adverse effects on them due to more mistakes in the process of doing things on their initiative; on the other hand, they are afraid that they may be ostracized or even retaliated against for “doing too much” which threatens the interests of others (Liu et al., 2010). In this situation, these employees may try to avoid proactive behavior in order to avoid risks. Based on the above analysis, job insecurity impacts the employees’ proactive behavior, which may be positive or negative. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:

Many current researchers, such as De Witte et al. (2016), have proposed the idea of job insecurity-stress to explain further the way that job insecurity affects the relevant outcome variables, in which cognitive appraisal of stress plays a vital role. However, the cognitive appraisal of job insecurity in the relationship between job insecurity and proactive behavior is rarely studied. The cognitive appraisal of job insecurity and job insecurity are two completely different concepts. The cognitive appraisal can be defined as a personal appraisal of a particular situation (Paškvan et al., 2016), and the results of the appraisal will vary significantly according to individual characteristics. Employees’ cognitive appraisal of job insecurity can be either positive (challenge appraisal) or negative (hindrance appraisal) (Charkhabi, 2019).

Cognitive appraisal theory can provide theoretical support for the role of cognitive appraisal in the relationship between job insecurity and proactive behavior. Cognitive appraisal theory describes a subjective process involving cognitive appraisal and coping response (Lazarus and Folkman, 1987). According to the cognitive appraisal theory, stress exists in the combination of people and the environment, which stems from the cognitive evaluation of the environment (Broekens et al., 2008). Such cognitive appraisal leads people to think that there is an imbalance between the environment and the individual’s ability to cope with the environment. They believe that the environment is a burden on or beyond the scope of their ability and has an impact on them (Lazarus and Folkman, 1987). The appraisal process of the combination of human and environment involves two important processes: primary appraisal and secondary appraisal. Primary appraisal is the perception of the threat of an event or environment, a process of determining whether an event or environment is an obstacle or a challenge (Webster et al., 2011). If the event or environment is considered to be threatening, it will be evaluated as an obstacle. The secondary appraisal assesses an individual’s ability to cope with or deal with situations (Vander Elst et al., 2014), that is, to assess whether and to what extent they can take effective countermeasures.

Based on cognitive appraisal theory, the stress caused by job insecurity can be evaluated as a hindrance or challenge. Faced with the threat of losing the job or job characteristics, individuals will make a primary appraisal. When employees think that such job insecurity is not enough to pose a significant threat to their situation or even can help them grow and achieve future achievements, they tend to evaluate job insecurity as a challenge. This kind of challenge appraisal means that employees can weaken or even eliminate the threat that they may lose their job or job characteristics in the future through their efforts. These employees will work more actively and hard. While doing their work well, they will further internalize their roles, incorporate or define organizational citizenship behavior as job responsibilities within their roles, break the original job boundaries, take the initiative to assume responsibilities (Beck et al., 2014), give full play to their subjective initiative and show more proactive behavior. On the contrary, if employees believe that job insecurity causes tremendous pressure or damages potential interests and hinders the realization of goals, such situation will not only affect the physical and mental health of employees (Chirumbolo et al., 2017; Lastad et al., 2018), but also hinder their personal development, and employees will tend to make hindrance appraisal of job insecurity. Individuals who make a hindrance appraisal to the environment are more inclined to take a negative response. In this case, these employees not only do not show proactive behavior but are more passive. Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed:

Previous studies have shown that individual differences in the cognitive processes play an important role in the influence of stressors on related outcomes (Semmer, 2003). Self-efficacy refers to the degree of confidence that an individual can perform a certain behavior to produce a certain desired result.” That is, the degree of confidence an employee believes that he or she can weaken or even eliminate the threat of losing his or her job or job characteristics through taking initiative. This concept is consistent with the secondary appraisal process to some extent. At the same time, some studies have found that self-efficacy can ease the relationship between stress and related outcomes (Schaubroeck et al., 2000) and is an important psychological resource for coping with environmental pressure (Hobfoll et al., 1990).

Combined with social cognitive theory and cognitive appraisal theory, employees with higher self-efficacy have stronger self-confidence to cope with the pressure of job insecurity and believe that they can complete the tasks efficiently and effectively. These employees are more inclined to evaluate job insecurity as a hindrance. On the contrary, employees with lower self-efficacy are not confident enough about their workability, feel that they can’t complete tasks to meet specific requirements, and think that job insecurity brings blow and damage, and are more inclined to evaluate job insecurity as a hindrance. In conclusion, individuals with higher self-efficacy are more likely to make a challenge appraisal of job insecurity, while individuals with lower self-efficacy are more likely to make a hindrance appraisal of job insecurity. Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed:

Further, it is known from hypotheses 2a, 2b and hypotheses 3a, 3b that the relationship between job insecurity and proactive behavior is transmitted through cognitive appraisal. At the same time, self-efficacy may affect the relationship between employees’ job insecurity and proactive behavior via the cognitive appraisal, forming a moderated mediating model. Therefore, the moderated mediating effect hypotheses are proposed:

Based on the above hypothesis, the theoretical model of the influence and mechanism of job insecurity on employees’ proactive behavior in this study is shown in Figure 1.

The data of this study were obtained by questionnaire survey. The participants of the survey were employees of enterprises. The questionnaires were distributed online by a professional market research firm from August to September 2020, covering industries including finance, sales, construction, manufacturing, real estate, and administrative institutions. In order to improve the efficiency of the questionnaire, we promise that all the data collected will only be used for academic research and will not be disclosed. In the end, a total of 348 questionnaires were collected. We have set the survey objects as enterprise employees before the questionnaire was issued. After the invalid questionnaires were systematically excluded according to this standard, a total of 257 valid questionnaires were collected, with an effective rate of 73.85%. The sample structure is shown in Table 1.

All variables in this study were measured using the existing validated scale. In order to ensure that the scale items are more in line with the current research background, we modified some of the scale items and then invited five employees of the enterprise to try to fill in the questionnaire and modify the doubtful places to form the initial questionnaire of this study. All scales were scaled using a 5-point Likert scale, with a scale of 1 to 5 indicating “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”

Using the scale adapted from Hellgren et al. (1999) to measure, including two dimensions: quantity job insecurity and quality job insecurity, a total of seven items. One of the quantity job insecurity items was, “I feel uneasy about losing my job in the future.” One of the quality job insecurity items was, “I think the organization will increase my job challenge in the future.” In this study, the reliability (Cronbach’s α) was 0.821.

The scale of general self-efficacy developed by Schwarzer et al. (1997) was adopted for measurement, consisting of ten items, such as “I can always solve difficult problems if I try my best” and “I am confident that I can effectively deal with anything unexpected.” The reliability (Cronbach’s α) was 0.872.

The cognitive appraisal of job insecurity scale which was further developed by Charkhabi (2018) was adopted for measurement, including two dimensions of the challenge and hindrance appraisal, with a total of six items. Challenge appraisal items such as “Job insecurity makes me focus on my job and perform better”; Hindrance appraisal items such as: “Job insecurity weakens my ability to focus on my job.” The reliability (Cronbach’s α) was 0.797 and 0.870.

The scale developed by Frese et al. (1997) was adopted for measurement, consisting of seven items, such as “I actively solve problems,” “I usually do more than I am required to do,” etc. The reliability (Cronbach’s α) was 0.838.

Many previous studies have shown that individual characteristic variables are likely to have an impact on employees’ proactive behaviors (Parker et al., 2006). Therefore, demographic variables such as gender, age, educational background, and work experience are selected as control variables in this study.

Since all the questionnaire data in this study were obtained by the same subject in the way of self-evaluation, there may be a problem of common method deviation. Harman single factor test was used to test the possible common method bias. The results showed that seven factors were eutectoid from the unrotated principal component analysis. The variance interpretation rate of the first factor was 32.583%, less than 40%. Therefore, it could be considered that there was no serious common method deviation.

Before hypothesis testing, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the data is needed. In this study, MPLUS 7.4 software was used for CFA to test the validity of the questionnaire. The test results of construction reliability and aggregation validity are shown in Table 2. Firstly, the construction reliability (CR) of each variable is greater than 0.8, indicating that the CR of the questionnaire in this study meets the requirements. Secondly, the average variance extraction (AVE) of each variable is greater than 0.5, indicating that the questionnaire had good aggregation validity. Thirdly, it can be seen from Table 3 that the direct correlation coefficient of all variables is less than the root mean square of their AVE, which reflects that the discriminant validity of each scale meets the requirements.

The mean, standard deviation, and correlation coefficients of the variables are shown in Table 3. It can be seen from the table that there was a significant negative correlation between job insecurity and employees’ proactive behavior (r = −0.499, p < 0.05). Job insecurity was significantly negatively correlated with challenge appraisal (r = −0.210, p < 0.05) and was significantly positively correlated with hindrance appraisal (r = 0.324, p < 0.05). The self-efficacy was positively correlated with employees’ challenge appraisal of job insecurity (r = 0.440, p < 0.05) and was negatively correlated with employees’ hindrance appraisal of job insecurity (r = −0.302, p < 0.05). Employees’ challenge appraisal (r = 0.487, p < 0.05) and hindrance (r = −0.290, p < 0.05) appraisal of job insecurity were significantly correlated with proactive behavior. This is consistent with the expectation of this study, and Hypothesis1 is preliminarily verified, which also lays a foundation for subsequent hypothesis testing.

Finally, in order to test the structural validity of the questionnaire, the single-factor model, two-factor model, three-factor model, four-factor model, and five-factor model were tested, respectively, as shown in Table 4. According to the results, the fitting effect of the five-factor model is better and obviously better than other models, which reflects the good structural validity of the questionnaire.

Based on SPSS 21.0, this study used hierarchical regression analysis to test the mediating effect of cognitive appraisal of job insecurity and the moderating effect of self-efficacy. The test results are shown in Table 5.

For the test of mediating effect, according to the suggestion of Baron and Kenny (1986), a three-step regression method was adopted. First of all, the control variables and independent variables regression were carried out for the mediated variable of challenge appraisal and hindrance appraisal, respectively. According to Model 1 and Model 4, job insecurity has a significant effect on employees’ challenge appraisal (r = −0.219, p < 0.001) and hindrance appraisal (r = 0.307, p < 0.001). Secondly, through the regression of control variables and the independent variable on the outcome variable, Model 8 shows that job insecurity has a significant negative effect on employees’ proactive behavior (r = −0.476, p < 0.001), and hypothesis 1 was verified. Finally, the mediating variable challenge appraisal and hindrance appraisal were added into the regression equation, respectively. The results showed that, in Model 9 and Model 10, the effect of job insecurity on proactive behavior was weakened, and the mediating variable challenge appraisal (r = 0.409, p < 0.001) and hindrance appraisal (r = −0.129, p < 0.05) had a significant effect on proactive behavior, indicating that employees’ cognitive appraisal of job insecurity played a partial mediating role between job insecurity and proactive behavior. Hypothesis 2a and Hypothesis 2b were also verified.

In order to test the moderating effect of self-efficacy, according to the suggestion of Edwards and Lambert (2007), the challenge and hindrance appraisal of job insecurity were, respectively, taken as the outcome variables. The job insecurity, self-efficacy, and the interaction between job insecurity and self-efficacy were successively added into the regression equation in turn. Model 3 shows that the interaction between job insecurity and self-efficacy has no significant effect on challenge appraisal, hypothesis 3a has not been verified. According to Model 6, the interaction between job insecurity and self-efficacy had a significant positive effect on hindrance appraisal (r = 0.196, p < 0.01), hypothesis 3b has been verified. Further, we drew a schematic diagram of the moderating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between job insecurity and employees’ hindrance appraisal, as shown in Figure 2. It can be seen from the figure that self-efficacy has a negative moderating effect on the positive relationship between job insecurity and hindrance appraisal of job insecurity. That is to say, the lower the level of self-efficacy, the more likely the employees to make a hindrance appraisal of job insecurity.

For the test of moderated mediating effect, we used the approach of Preacher et al. (2007) to test the moderating effect of self-efficacy on the mediating effect of cognitive appraisal between job insecurity and proactive behavior through the Process program of SPSS software. As indicated in Table 6, job insecurity had a stronger mediating effect on proactive behavior via hindrance appraisal when the self-efficacy had low levels (Effect = 0.571, SE = 0.121, CI = 0.333–0.809) rather than high levels (Effect = 0.325, SE = 0.098, CI = 0.131–0.519). H4b was verified.

Based on the perspectives of social cognition theory and cognitive appraisal theory, we associated job insecurity with employees’ proactive behavior, which expands the perspective and boundary of the research on job insecurity and proactive behavior. Previous studies on job insecurity are mostly based on social exchange theory and social identity theory to discuss the impact of job insecurity on employees’ internal psychological intentions, such as well-being (De Witte et al., 2016) and organizational commitment (Chirumbolo et al., 2017), while fewer researchers paid attention to the impact of job insecurity on employees’ behavioral intentions and work behaviors. In recent years, with the attention of all walks of life to innovation, some researchers have discussed the relationship between job insecurity and employees’ innovative behavior and creativity (Teng et al., 2019). However, in today’s increasingly fierce market competition, organizations urgently need employees to exert their subjective initiative to cope with the torrent of market competition. Proactive behavior has become one of the key factors that determine the success or failure of organizations today. This study takes the proactive behavior as a result variable of job insecurity, from the perspective of employee’s cognitive appraisal of job insecurity, discusses the influences of job insecurity on employees’ proactive behavior, which provides a new theoretical perspective for the study of behavior and enriches the previous research on the result variables of job insecurity.

At the same time, this study combined individual factors with environmental factors, explores the mechanism of job insecurity on proactive behavior, and explained the “black box” of job insecurity and employees’ proactive behavior association. As a common source of work stress in organizations (Richter et al., 2014), job insecurity will inevitably impact employees’ work behavior. However, the mechanism of its impact on employees’ proactive behavior still needs to be further studied. So, this study introduced employees’ cognitive appraisal of job insecurity as a mediating variable, took individual factor self-efficacy as a moderating variable. Combining environmental factors with individual factors, this study discusses the effect of job insecurity on proactive behavior. Job insecurity has a direct effect on proactive behavior and affects employees’ proactive behavior through their cognitive appraisal of job insecurity, in which self-efficacy plays a moderating role.

By constructing a moderated mediation model, this paper explores the impact of job insecurity on employees’ proactive behavior. It explains the phenomenon that different employees in an organization have different performances in the face of job insecurity. In today’s organizations, different employees react differently when facing the same pressure. Some employees are lazier and slack off in the face of job insecurity, while others are relatively optimistic. This study conclusion explains the reason for this organizational phenomenon. In the face of job insecurity, employees make cognitive appraisals to evaluate this pressure as a challenge or hindrance. When job insecurity harms proactive behavior, challenge appraisal of job insecurity can alleviate the negative impact. Employees will still properly play the subjective initiative. While hindrance appraisal of job insecurity will further deepen this negative impact, and employees will correspondingly less proactive.

It provides new ideas for the organization to stimulate the employees to show more proactive behavior. Today, job insecurity has widely existed in all kinds of enterprises, and no enterprise can eliminate the job insecurity. Job insecurity hurts employees, to a certain extent, can promote the innovation behavior of employees. In this case, only as much as possible to weaken the negative impact of job insecurity on proactive behavior. The conclusion of this study shows that to stimulate the subjective initiative of employees to the maximum extent: On the one hand, it is necessary to pay attention to the self-confidence and self-efficacy of employees themselves from the perspective of individual employees. Enterprises can carry out a variety of targeted training according to the different situations of employees to enhance their working ability and thus enhance their sense of self-efficacy. Simultaneously, contingency management should be adopted to give appropriate recognition to employees’ work and cultivate their work confidence. On the other hand, from the perspective of the organizational environment, employees’ job insecurity should be appropriately reduced to reduce the impact on employees’ work enthusiasm. Enterprises can reduce employees’ job insecurity by providing more organizational support for employees and creating an organizational atmosphere in which leaders care about employees.

This study has made some contributions in theory and management practice, but there are still the following research limitations:

First of all, the sample data of this study was collected from multiple industries enterprise employees, is not restricted to a particular industry. However, industry employees’ job insecurity and self-efficacy will vary by industry, especially the different industries affected by the outbreak of the COVID – 19 degree has the various difference. So, it is significant to study the job insecurity of employees for a specific industry (such as manufacturing industry, foreign trade industry, etc.). Future research can limit specific industries to carry out relevant research so that enterprises in different industries can formulate more targeted management plans according to their actual situation.

Secondly, the data of this study come from employees’ self-evaluation at the same point in time, although the data analysis has passed the Harman single factor test proves that there is no serious problem of common method deviation, it is still a cross-section data. Even if most of the research hypotheses of this study were supported, also cannot truly reflect the causal relationship between variables. In the future, we can try to collect longitudinal tracking data for research to further effectively verify the mechanism of job insecurity on employees’ proactive behavior.

Finally, the theoretical model of this study is only from the individual level employees, discusses the effects and mechanism of job insecurity on proactive behavior, does not take into account the organization level and other factors that influence the employee’s work behavior. However, employees’ work behavior is influenced by many factors. Future research can focus on the effects and its mechanism of organizational-level factors (such as the organizational atmosphere) and the leadership level factors (such as leadership style) on proactive behavior, and further expand the research on influencing factors and its mechanism of employees’ proactive behavior.