Telepressure impairs sleep quality in digital nomads indirectly through reduced psychological and spatial detachment, with psychological resilience moderating only the spatial detachment–sleep quality link.
Telepressure exerted significant negative effects on both psychological detachment and spatial detachment in digital nomads.
The direct effect of telepressure on sleep quality was not statistically significant.
Telepressure indirectly impaired sleep quality through psychological detachment as a mediator.
Telepressure indirectly impaired sleep quality through spatial detachment as a mediator.
Psychological resilience positively moderated the relationship between spatial detachment and sleep quality, but did not significantly moderate the psychological detachment–sleep quality link.
The study employed a cross-sectional survey design with 539 digital nomads in China using PLS-SEM.
This research suggests that digital nomads — people who work remotely while traveling or living in varied locations — face a hidden threat to their sleep from 'telepressure,' meaning the feeling that they must always be available and respond quickly to work messages. The study of 539 digital nomads in China found that telepressure does not directly disrupt sleep, but instead harms sleep by eroding two types of 'detachment': the ability to mentally switch off from work (psychological detachment) and the ability to physically separate oneself from work spaces and devices (spatial detachment). When both types of detachment were reduced, sleep quality suffered. The research also found that psychological resilience — a person's capacity to adapt and bounce back from stress — played a protective role, but only in relation to spatial detachment. People with higher resilience were better able to translate physical separation from work into actual sleep benefits, suggesting they are more effective at using environmental boundaries (like putting away devices or leaving a workspace) to recover. Resilience did not, however, protect against the effects of being mentally unable to stop thinking about work. These findings matter because they highlight that flexible, technology-enabled work arrangements are not automatically healthy. This research suggests that organizations and individuals need to actively support both mental and physical disengagement from work to protect sleep health among remote and nomadic workers — for instance, through clear norms around after-hours communication and intentional physical separation from work tools and spaces.
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Upload Your LabsXu Z, Cao Q, Zhou Z, Han Y, Yang C, Hu H. (2026). When telepressure never sleeps: psychological/spatial detachment as mediators to sleep quality in digital nomads.. Frontiers in public health. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1788479