Happiness among Nonstandard Employees in Europe: The Role of the Worker’s Value Orientation and Sources of Social Support

AbstractThis study explored self-reported happiness among nonstandard (part-time, temporary, and no-contract) employees in Europe. Rooted in Theory of basic individual values and the modified Buffer hypothesis, it focused on the role of worker’s value orientation and sources of social support/social buffers. Data stemmed from European Social Survey Citation2018 and Eurostat datasets, and was analyzed using multilevel modeling. As an introductory insight, “feeling good”, i.e., happiness was found associated with the respondents’ age, sex, and income – in favor of younger employees, women, and those with higher salaries. The value orientation identified as beneficial for happiness included being an “open hedonist” and not caring much about being “powerful”. Related to social buffers, happiness was positively associated with household-provided support, whereas support from welfare state policies, trade unions, and prosperous socio-economic environment had no effect.Keywords: Nonstandard employeesEuropehappinessopen hedonismpoweraged identitiesgendered identitieshousehold supportincome Disclosure statementThe authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.Notes1 According to Warr’s (Citation2018) analysis of ESS 2006 and 2012 datasets, Self-direction and Stimulation were the only two Schwartz’s basic values in which self-employed workers/entrepreneurs differentiated from employees.2 The (ICC and MLM) calculations were performed using the estimation method of Maximum Likelihood (instead of Restricted Maximum Likelihood) because the number of our Level-2 units/groups/countries is not particularly small − which made the analyses less prone to yielding biased estimates (Browne and Draper, Citation2006).3 Consider how the items are introduced in ESS questionnaire: “Now I will briefly describe some people. Please listen to each description and tell me how much each person is or is not like you.”Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar.