The psychological strain of becoming self-employed: a longitudinal investigation of honeymoon-hangover effects

Jingjing Qu (), Jun Li () and Yannis Georgellis ()
Additional contact information
Jingjing Qu: Xuhui District
Jun Li: University of Huddersfield

Small Business Economics, 2025, vol. 64, issue 2, No 8, 433-449

Abstract: Abstract Using British longitudinal data, we re-examine the honeymoon-hangover hypothesis (Boswell et al., 2005) for the psychological strain (measured by anxiety and depression) employees experience when they become self-employed. Most previous studies explore self-employment honeymoon-hangover effects mostly for job or life satisfaction. Employing the entropy balancing approach, we find that employees who make the transition to self-employment experience an immediate improvement in anxiety and depression, like that experienced by those who change employers. Our results hint at a slightly stronger initial improvement of psychological strain for those switching employers compared to those entering self-employment. However, within-individual variation analysis of psychological strain supports the honeymoon-hangover hypothesis in that any early anxiety and depression improvements taper off over time. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Keywords: Anxiety; Depression; Honeymoon hangover; Psychological strain; Self-employment; Well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J28 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-024-00913-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:64:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s11187-024-00913-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-024-00913-3

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().