Temporal Focus as a Mediator between Cultural Values and Subjective Happiness: Evidence from Ecuador and Russia

Abstract

Though numerous scholars have studied subjective time, its predictors and effects, the general model considering demographic variables, cultural values and level of wellbeing is not presented. This study seeks to bridge this gap by contributing a comparative study of two very different countries: Ecuador (N=745, aged 19—76, 48.7% male), a Latin American developing country, and Russia (N=428, aged 18—72, 40.2% male), an emerging Eurasian nation. We assumed that temporal focus plays the role of a mediator in the relationship between cultural values and subjective happiness in both countries. To predict the temporal focus (Temporal Focus Scale by Shipp, Edwards, and Lambert, 2009) in both countries, based on the previous literature the study tests the importance of three groups of variables: demographic factors (gender, age, education, income), subjective happiness (Subjective Happiness Scale by Lyubomirsky and Lepper, 1999), and cultural values (Cultural Values Scale by Yoo, Donthu and Lenartowics, 2011). The first stage of analysis involved confirmatory factor analyses and invariance tests for the scales used. Subsequently, multiple regression models made it possible to establish that sociodemographic variables, introduced as covariates, had little influence on the prediction of people's temporal orientation. However, the cultural and psychological variables (long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance and subjective happiness) introduced as predictors played an important role in the prediction of temporal (current, past and future) focus. Additionally, there are some cultural and psychological predictors of temporal focus specific for each country. Ultimately, structural equation models demonstrated that temporal focus plays the role of the mediator in the relationship between cultural values and subjective happiness in both Ecuador and Russia.