The influence mechanism of emotional labor on the turnover intention of college counselors: Based on the multiple effects of emotional exhaustion and perceived organizational support

College counselors around the world, as pivotal components of educational support systems, provide substantial psychological and emotional counseling, making them high-intensity emotional workers. In China, college counselors, who are the key force in ideological and political education, possess unique professional characteristics and conflicting job demands. Such persistent emotional pressure often induces emotional exhaustion, a primary driver of their high turnover rates. Therefore, this paper explores how emotional labor impacts counselors’ turnover intention, examining the mediating role of emotional exhaustion and the moderating role of perceived organizational support through a survey of 337 counselors. The findings indicate: Deep acting and perceived organizational support correlate negatively with turnover intention, while surface acting and emotional exhaustion correlate positively. Emotional exhaustion partially mediates the link between surface acting and turnover intention, and fully mediates the relationship between deep acting and turnover intention. Additionally, perceived organizational support strengthens the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion in the deep acting pathway and weakens it in the surface acting pathway. This paper theoretically extends emotional labor theory to hybrid roles and practically informs counselor team stability and “de-administration” reforms in China. Its insights into “role conflict-induced emotional regulation dynamics”, can be generalized to all professions that require a balance between conflicting role demands, enriching cross-cultural emotional labor research.