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PurposeThe present study aims to analyze the role of the appraisal of stressors as harmful and threatening (distress) and/or as opportunities and challenges (eustress) in inducing negative (burnout) and positive (engagement) effects. It compares appraisal of occupational stressors in Poland and Spain and looks for differences between these countries in the associations between different types of appraisals and their positive and negative outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThe study analyzes the equivalence of relations across cultures by constraining structural equation models to be equivalent across the Spanish (n=603) and Polish (n=147) data sets of social care services employees. Multigroup analysis was used to test the invariance of the model for the two samples.FindingsThe results showed that the constrained model is robust, stable and invariant across the Spanish and Polish samples, which means that the structural properties of the model do not differ between the two countries. Also, Spanish and Polish workers obtain similar average results on the levels of the appraisals of distress and eustress. Polish social workers have a significantly higher level of burnout and a significantly lower level of work engagement than Spanish employees.Practical implicationsThe confirmation that in both countries eustress has beneficial outcomes on psychological health in the form of work engagement suggests that employees should be taught to perceive work in a more positive way to increase work engagement. The roles that leadership and cultural factors play in this process need to be taken into consideration. Cross‐cultural comparisons of stress are especially relevant for expatriates and for managers in charge of multicultural teams.Originality/valueThe study goes beyond a mere comparison of general stress levels across countries or the relationship between the appraisal of distress and burnout, and it takes into account both negative and positive appraisals of stressors, as well as the strength of their relationships with their outcomes.

This study analyzes the mediating role of the appraisal of environmental stressors in the relationship between physical characteristics in the offices and health symptoms. It also studies the moderating role of positive emotions in the relationship between physical characteristics and the appraisal of environmental stressors using a diary study on 59 office workers ( n = 432 time points) and sensor data. The results show that the appraisal of environmental stressors mediates the relationship between physical office characteristics and health symptoms, emphasizing the important link of stress appraisal in the stressors–strain relationship. The results also show that positive emotions moderate the relationship between the sound level and the appraisal of noise, supporting the fact that emotions can have an impact on people's appraisals. The contributions of this study are the objective measurement of physical stressors in offices, along with their appraisals by the office users, using the diary study design.