Interest as a Moderator in the Relationship Between Challenge/Skills Balance and Flow at Work: An Analysis at Within-Individual Level

Céline Bricteux, Jose Navarro (), Lucía Ceja and Guillaume Fuerst
Additional contact information
Céline Bricteux: University of Barcelona
Jose Navarro: University of Barcelona
Lucía Ceja: University of Navarra
Guillaume Fuerst: Université Paris V: René Descartes

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2017, vol. 18, issue 3, No 13, 880 pages

Abstract: Abstract Considering flow as a non-ergodic process (i.e. non-homogeneous across individuals and non-stationary over time) that happens at the within-individual level, in this research we work with Bakker’s model that propose flow as made up by three components: intrinsic motivation, enjoyment, and absorption. Taking into account that flow theory can be considered as an intrinsic motivation theory, and the recent proposals about the need to distinguish between pre-conditions of flow and the flow experience itself, we look at interest as a moderator between the challenge/skills balance and the experience of flow, rather than a component of the flow experience. A total of 3640 recordings were collected from a sample of 58 workers using an experience sampling method (several registers a day, during 21 working days). The data was analyzed using regression techniques in each participant (i.e. at within-individual level). Our work tries to respond to the following two research questions: Will interest play a moderating role in the relationship between challenge/skills balance and flow? Will a non-linear model (cusp catastrophe model) better explain the relationship among challenge/skills balance, interest, and flow? The results suggest that our hypotheses were correct: including interest as moderator better explains the relationship between challenge/skills balance and flow in comparison to a model without moderation (R2 values change from 0.33 to 0.50). Additionally, carrying out the analysis following non-linear techniques explained more variance as well (R2 = 0.67), and this increment was significant. These results support the idea that interest should be considered as a key precondition for the appearance of flow, and this relationship is non-linear. We could say that these findings are exemplary in the field and brings up questions for their application in further research.

Keywords: Flow; Challenge/skills balance; Interest; Non-ergodic process; Non-linear modelling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-016-9755-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:jhappi:v:18:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s10902-016-9755-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-016-9755-8

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().