Everything comes at a price: The influence of job seekers’ motives on preference in the trade-off between pay and leisure

Recruitment research has often neglected behavioral outcomes in the context of job choice acceptance, and insight into the relationship between individual differences and recruitment outcomes remains scarce. The present paper investigates how the need for achievement, the need for power, and the need for affiliation are related to the preference for either higher pay or more leisure, and we model this relationship as a trade-off. We test our hypotheses with data from 605 individuals. To measure job offer acceptance, we develop a new methodology that allows participants to choose between a set of contracts that are customized for each participant based on individual reference points. We find that the need for achievement and the need for power are significantly positively related to the preference for higher pay, which results in less leisure. We do not find a significant direct effect of the need for affiliation. We discuss the implications of the study in relation to the needs-supplies fit perspective and show the practical applicability of our approach to customizing working contracts.