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The aim of this chapter is to provide a literature review on daily recovery during non-work time. Specifically, next to discussing theories that help us understand the process of recovery, we will clarify how recovery and its potential outcomes have been conceptualized so far. Consequently, we present empirical findings of diary studies addressing the activities that may facilitate or hinder daily recovery. We will pay special attention to potential mechanisms that may underlie the facilitating or hindering processes. Owing to the limited research on daily recovery, we will review empirical findings on predictors and outcomes of a related construct, namely need for recovery. We conclude with an overall framework from which daily recovery during non-work time can be understood. In this framework, we claim that daily recovery is an important moderator in the process through which job characteristics and their related strain may lead to unfavorable states on a daily basis.

Torbjörn Åkerstedt, Ph.D. in psychology, 1979, is professor of behavioral physiology at Stockholm University and director of the Stress Research Institute, affiliated to Karolinska institute. He has been President of the Scandinavian Research Society, the European Sleep Research Society, and Secretary General of the World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies. He has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals. The focus of his work has been on sleep regulation, sleep quality, sleepiness and risk, effects of shift work, and stress on sleep and sleepiness.

For decades research on occupational stress and well-being has been dominated by studies that demonstrated the negative effects of job stressors and lack of resources on employee health and well-being. Although this body of research is highly important and informative, it offers only limited insight into the processes that offset and “undo” the stress process. During recent years, researchers have paid increasing attention to such processes that reduce and reverse the effects of stress (i.e., recovery processes). This 7th volume of Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being is devoted to this growing research area on job stress recovery. The volume includes seven excellent chapters that provide state-of-the-art overviews on this theme, identify research gaps, and provide inspiring suggestions for further research.