Well-being effects of self-employment: A spatial inquiry
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Publication Date
2019-07Journal Title
Journal of Business Venturing
ISSN
0883-9026
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Volume
34
Issue
4
Pages
589-607
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
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Abreu, M., Oner, Ö., Brouwer, A., & van Leeuwen, E. (2019). Well-being effects of self-employment: A spatial inquiry. Journal of Business Venturing, 34 (4), 589-607. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2018.11.001
Abstract
Our paper presents an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial well-being using a large-scale longitudinal household survey from the UK that tracks almost 50,000 individuals across seven waves over the period 2009-2017, as well as a number of exploratory case studies. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating how entrepreneurial well-being varies across locations along the urban-rural continuum, and across wealthy-deprived neighbourhoods. We use a Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) approach to compare the well-being outcomes of individuals who switch into self-employment from waged employment, and show that entrepreneurial well-being, in the form of job satisfaction, is significantly higher for those living in semi-urban locations, relative to those living in urban and rural locations. We argue that semi-urban locations provide an optimal combination of ease of doing business and quality of life. Our results also show that individuals in wealthy neighbourhoods who switch into self-employment experience higher job satisfaction than otherwise comparable individuals living in materially deprived neighbourhoods, although the latter experience greater levels of life satisfaction following the switch.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2018.11.001
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/286712
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