Date
7-21-2026
Department
Helms School of Government
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Public Administration (PhD)
Chair
Tory L. Weaver
Keywords
Employee Satisfaction, Employee Engagement, Work-Life Balance, Employee Performance, Turnover Intention, Herzberg's Two-Factor
Disciplines
Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
Recommended Citation
Fant, Beatrice Nadine Sibug, "Associating Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Two-Factor Theory and Influential Factors on Turnover Intentions Within the U.S. Federal Government Agencies: An Ex Post Facto Quantitative Method Approach" (2026). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 8683.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/8683
Abstract
The study examined the critical issue of employee turnover in U.S. federal government agencies and the challenge of retaining highly qualified individuals amid competition from private-sector companies offering employees multiple benefits. It follows Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Two-Factor Theory and measures the impact of employee satisfaction, engagement, work-life balance, and performance on turnover intentions. Additionally, the study considered demographic and occupational variables, such as gender, supervisory status, military service, and years of service in the federal government. Using data from the 2022 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), which received responses from 557,778 participants (a 35% response rate), the study investigates how employee satisfaction, engagement, work-life balance, and performance impact turnover intentions. The study employed Summary Statistics (Mean and Standard Deviation), Frequency Distribution, Multicollinearity Diagnostics, and Binary Logistic Regression Analysis. The results indicated that the examined factors influence turnover intentions, thereby rejecting the initial hypothesis and highlighting the roles of motivators and hygiene factors in shaping retention strategies within federal agencies. By integrating employee satisfaction, engagement, work-life balance, and performance alongside demographic control variables into a single analytical model grounded in Herzberg's framework, this study addresses the gap in existing literature which lacked integrated, multi-predictor model of turnover intention among U.S. federal employees using large-scale FEVS data, and extends the empirical application of the Two-Factor Theory to the federal public sector context and contributes to the body of knowledge on employee turnover behavior in public administration research.
