Abstract: In the context of intensified market competition and organizational transformation, a series of phenomena of employees′ impaired mental health have attracted researchers′ extensive attention. Among them, job insecurity is not conducive to maintaining employees′ mental health. However, most scholars only discussed the causes and consequences of job insecurity, ignoring the potential distinction between cognitive and emotional aspects of job insecurity and the impact of the two kinds of job insecurity on employees′ mental health. Based on cognitive evaluation theory and emotional evaluation theory, this study discusses the important influence of information providing behavior on maintaining employees′ mental health, and analyzes the chain mediating effect of affective job insecurity caused by cognitive process. The results of this study show that organizational information providing behavior has a significantly negative impact on employees′ cognitive job insecurity;the information provided by the organization has a significantly negative impact on employees′ mental health;the information providing behavior of the organization affects employees′ mental health by affecting their cognitive job insecurity;the information providing behavior of the organization influences employees′ affective job insecurity through their cognitive work insecurity and then affects their mental health. By reducing cognitive job insecurity, the organization′s information-providing behavior reduces the chain mediating effect of affective job insecurity and improves employees′ mental health. This study theoretically enriches the research on the impact of organizational information providing behavior on employees′ mental health, and practically helps organizations solve employees′ cognitive and emotional work insecurity through information providing and prevention, so as to relieve employees′ impaired mental health.

Key words: information providing behavior, cognitive job insecurity, affective job insecurity, mental health