The expansion of emotional labor into the human services sector has raised concerns about emotional exhaustion and gender inequality, yet the potential for emotional work to serve as a source of motivation and meaning remains underexplored. This study reconceptualizes emotional labor as a dynamic, agentic process encompassing three stages: experiencing, regulating, and expressing emotion. Drawing on a nationally representative, multi-source dataset from the first round of the China Social Work Longitudinal Study (N = 5965), we examine how this emotional process unfolds differently by gender and how professional efficacy mediates the relationship between role ambiguity and work meaningfulness. We further explore how organizational governance—specifically internal governance and governmental support—moderates these relationships. Our findings reveal that women demonstrate stronger emotional regulation and derive greater work meaningfulness through professional efficacy, particularly under low governmental support, whereas men’s emotion processes are more direct and enhanced by organizational governance. These results underscore the importance of gender-sensitive and organizationally informed approaches to managing emotional labor. By integrating gendered agency and institutional context, this study offers a new framework for understanding emotional work and vocational development in the human services sector.

When children enter adolescence, their personality traits easily give rise to psychological reactance (PR). PR involves a desire for autonomy and independence, as well as an aversion to parental and social rules and restrictions. Factors that influence PR include physiological, familial, and social aspects. However, most studies on adolescent noncompliance have primarily focused on rebellious behavior. Little research has examined motivational state reactance, although its interaction with environmental perception can significantly affect adolescents’ lives. This study aimed to explore the relationship between the perceived friendliness of the community environment and cognitive processing at different quality of life (QoL) levels in relation to PR among adolescents. Propensity score matching was performed on a sample of 3546 adolescents, collected in Sanya, China. The results show that child-friendly communities (CFCs) had a significantly negative impact on adolescents’ PR levels. Additionally, QoL had a moderating effect, meaning that the higher the QoL, the stronger the role of a CFC in alleviating PR. In contrast to claims that PR is determined by temperament or character profiles, this study reveals the importance of environmental shaping through triadic reciprocal determinism and a focus on the key role of the community environment.