Stress and Health 26: 161–168 (2010) © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 161 RESEARCH ARTICLE Does Loyalty Protect Chinese Workers from Stress? The Role of Affective Organizational Commitment in the Greater China Region Luo Lu 1 * † , Oi-Ling Siu 2 & Chang-Qin Lu 3 1 Department of Business Administration, National Taiwan University, Taiwan 2 Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University, Hong Kong 3 Department of Psychology, Peking University, China Summary The aim of this research was to test the direct and moderating effects of affective organizational commitment (AOC) on the work stressors—job satisfaction relationship among employees in the Greater China Region. A self- administered survey was conducted to collect data from three major cities in the region, namely Beijing, Hong Kong and Taipei (n = 380). Three most important work stressors were assessed: heavy workload, lack of work autonomy and interpersonal conflict. We found that both work stressors and AOC were related to job satisfaction. Specifically, heavy workload, lack of autonomy and interpersonal conflict were negatively related to job satisfaction; whereas, AOC had a positive relation with job satisfaction. Furthermore, AOC moderated the interpersonal conflict—job satisfaction and the lack of autonomy—job satisfaction relationships. The present study thus found joint effects of work stressors and AOC (as buffers) on work attitudes among Chinese employees in the Greater China Region, encompassing three sub-societies of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 12 March 2009; Accepted 18 August 2009 Keywords work stressors; affective organizational commitment; job satisfaction; Chinese employees *Correspondence Luo Lu, Department of Business Administration, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 106, Taiwan, China. † Email: luolu@ntu.edu.tw Contact/grant sponsor National Science Council, Taiwan, China Contact/grant number NSC93-2752-H-030-001-PAE Dpes loyalty protect Chinese workers from stress? The role of affective organizational commitment in the Greater China Region Published online 23 September 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/smi.1286 Hence, a major limitation in this literature is its decid- edly Western focus. As the Greater China Region has 20 per cent of the world’s population and represents an ever increasing economic power; it is valuable to obtain data from Chinese employees to contribute to the work Introduction In a comprehensive literature review, Cooper, Dewe and O’Driscoll (2001) argued that almost all of the occupational stress theories are developed and empirically tested in Western, industrialized countries.