Not all paths lead to Rome: Self-employment, wellness beliefs, and well-being

Pankaj C. Patel and Marcus T. Wolfe

Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 2020, vol. 14, issue C

Abstract: Entrepreneurship research in recent years has developed a meaningful understanding of well-being among self-employed individuals. Moving from the direct and conditional association between self-employment and well-being, we propose a moderated-mediation model based on the mediating effects of wellness beliefs. Wellness beliefs could be an important channel to explaining variations in subjective well-being among the self-employed. The mediation effects of wellness beliefs are conditional on two main demographic factors—gender and ethnicity—widely studied in the entrepreneurship literature. Based on a sample of 5822 participants (5208 employed and 614 self-employed) from the 2015 National Health Attitude Survey we find that wellness beliefs are an important mediator in realizing higher subjective well-being from self-employment, however, the strength of the mediation does not vary by white vs. non-white, however, there is marginal support for differences in strength of mediation for males relative to females. The effect sizes are small. Our findings unpack the self-employment and well-being association and highlight the important role of wellness beliefs.

Keywords: Ethnicity; Gender; Self-employment; Well-being; Wellness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobuve:v:14:y:2020:i:c:s2352673420300391

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbvi.2020.e00183

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