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Employees' job satisfaction influences their commitment, affects quality and productivity, and is therefore crucial for a labour-intensive industry such as Tourism. In this article the determinants of job satisfaction are examined in comparative terms for tourism workers versus those employed in the rest of the service sector. In contrast with previous research, the analysis is not restricted to hospitality workers, includes all types of occupations, and is based on a nationwide representative sample. The explanatory models of job satisfaction are estimated using ordered logit techniques, considering personal and household characteristics as well as objective and subjective job characteristics. The results indicate that job satisfaction is significantly lower among tourism workers and that in some cases notable differences exist between the factors influencing job satisfaction in the tourism sector compared with the rest of the service sector, which might be relevant for managers and policymakers.

Please cite this article as: Fuentes, R., Lillo-Bañuls, A., Smoothed bootstrap Malmquist Index based on DEA model to compute productivity of tax offices, Expert Systems with Applications (2014), doi: http://dx

This article analyses the interrelationship between educational mismatch, wages and job satisfaction in the Spanish tourism sector in the first years of the global economic crisis. It is shown that there is a much higher incidence of overeducation among workers in the Spanish tourism sector than in the rest of the economy despite this sector recording lower educational levels. The study estimates two models to analyse the influence of the educational mismatch on wages and job satisfaction for workers in the tourism industry and for the Spanish economy as a whole. The first model shows that in the tourism sector the wage penalty associated with over-education is approximately 10%. The second reveals that in the tourism sector the levels of satisfaction of over-educated workers are considerably lower than those corresponding to workers well assigned. With respect to the differences between tourism and the overall economy in both aspects, the wage penalty is substantially lower in the case of tourism industries and the effect of over-education on job satisfaction is very similar to that of the economy as a whole in a context where both wages and the private returns to education are considerably lower in the tourism sector.

This paper studies the returns on education for workers in the Spanish tourism sector through wage equations and analysis of the extent to which education results in higher returns. The authors employ an extended Mincer model in which additional variables influencing wage rates, apart from education and experience, are included. The combined effects of experience and education on workers' incomes throughout their working lives are also analysed. The results indicate that, among other things, (a) the Spanish tourism sector values its employees' levels of education somewhat less than other service sectors; (b) the size of the firm plays an important role in wage determinants; and (c) the pattern of lifelong earnings is different for workers with higher and lower levels of education.

The authors analyse private returns to education in the Spanish tourism sector -that is, the increase in salary associated with an additional year of study. Mincer-type functions are estimated, drawing on a large sample from the Spanish Survey on Working Conditions, which allows robust estimations. Unlike previous analyses, the existence of an ability bias is considered explicitly through the use of instrumental variables techniques. The results show that, contrary to previous estimates based on OLS, the estimated returns in the tourism sector are not significantly different from those of the Spanish economy as a whole. The authors also provide additional evidence on the heterogeneity that is apparent when the tourism sector workforce is disaggregated by age, sex and work experience.

This article examines the relationship between commuting time and satisfaction with different life domains. Based on data for Spain, the results show that commuting time exerts a negative impact on all areas of satisfaction for male and female workers, and that longer commutes affect women's satisfaction disproportionally. Using public transport and walking/cycling worsen this effect, as do higher degrees of urbanization and population density. According to the evidence, whose robustness is tested in several ways, the negative effect of commuting time on satisfaction is greater for lower income workers, although for them the Great Recession moderated this effect.

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