Mental Health and Psychological Stress in Industrial Transformation: Economic Psychology and Industry Identity in China's Merchant-Owned Wharf and Warehouse Industry
Xinge Xiong, Zizheng WangAbstract
Objective
This study examines mental health and psychological stress in Chinese merchant investors during industrial transformation. It investigates how competitive pressures and institutional modernization generated anxiety, depressive symptoms, and emotional distress. The objective is a psychiatric framework for understanding how economic transformation affects psychological well-being in business communities.
Subjects and Methods
This study analyzes China's merchant-owned wharf and warehouse industry through economic psychology and industry identity. Psychiatric frameworks include: risk perception examining how uncertainty generates anxiety; social identity assessing how nationalist motivations buffer existential distress; attachment theory understanding how kinship networks provide psychological security; and stress-vulnerability models evaluating how institutional modernization moderates psychological burden.
Results
Mental health findings reveal significant challenges. Competition generated chronic anxiety and perceived threat. Nationalist rhetoric functioned as cognitive reappraisal, transforming profit-driven anxiety into purposeful engagement, reducing depressive symptoms. Capital-intensive nature sustained chronic stress. Institutional modernization—associational frameworks, credit integration—provided social support and reduced uncertainty-related distress. However, semi-colonial constraints perpetuated existential insecurity, maintaining elevated stress.
Conclusions
Industrial transformation was associated with significant mental health outcomes—chronic anxiety, depressive symptoms, and emotional distress—moderated by nationalist cognitive reappraisal and institutional support. Competitive pressures generated psychological burden, while nationalist reframing provided protective meaning-making. Institutional modernization buffered uncertainty-related stress. These findings inform mental health interventions for business communities undergoing economic transformation. Future research should examine longitudinal mental health trajectories in transforming industries.
Corresponding Author
Xinge Xiong, Hengyang Normal University, Hengyang, Hunan 421010, China.