Leisure Factors Predicting the Happiness of Self-Employed Workers in South Korea

Abstract

South Korea’s employment status is characterized by a high rate of self-employment and many small-scale self-employed businesses with no employees. This study explored leisure factors relating to self-employed individuals’ subjective happiness based on data from the 2019 National Leisure Activity Survey. The extracted data (N = 2343) were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, Kendall’s τb coefficient, Eta correlation coefficient, phi coefficient, and Cramer’s V. And a three-step hierarchical regression analysis was performed to identify multidimensional variables that predict happiness more effectively. In Model 3, which additionally inserted positive and intrinsic factors into Model 2, the explanatory power was significantly increased. The predictors of subjective happiness among self-employed people identified in the final regression model were high economic status (β = 0.05), perceived health status (β = 0.32), financial constraints (β = −0.09), leisure recognition (β = 0.20), and work–life balance (leisure-oriented β = 0.09; work-oriented β = −0.13). This study’s findings will contribute to the establishment of basic data, to prepare empirical measures to improve self-employed individuals’ quality of life.

Unlocking Happiness: Assessing the Monetary Value of Leisure Activities on Subjective Well-Being

“…First, this study confirms the positive relationships between leisure participation and subjective well-being and similar concepts (e.g., happiness, life satisfaction), consistent with earlier studies [10,18,27,42,49]. The results suggest that the managers of leisure-related companies and policymakers should make efforts to increase the number of people who frequently participate in leisure activities, as it certainly helps well-being and happiness.…”

“…This survey included nation-wide representative samples of Korean individuals; it consists of 10,049 participants over 15 years of age across the nation. The NLAS was originally designed and conducted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute to investigate the annual trend that reflects changes in lifestyle, leisure activity (including culture, sports and tourism activities), and quality of life [42,44]. As the NLAS is one of the official statistics approved by Statistics Korea (Approval Number 113014), the NLAS used the stratified multi-stage cluster sampling method-that is, region, administrative district, and cluster, to ensure the representativeness of the respondents against the Korean population.…”

“…Lastly, one's perceived leisure participation (i.e., sufficiency of leisure expenses, sufficiency of leisure time-weekdays, and sufficiency of leisure time-weekend) was controlled in the regression model. These variables could be considered as a proxy for leisure constraint that have effects on happiness if they are insufficient [20,42,43].…”

Urban and rural disparities: evaluating happiness levels in Indonesian women

“…[10][11][12] Similarly, professionals or students might experience varied happiness sources, warranting diverse measurement tools aligned with specific influencing factors. 3,[13][14][15] To cater to these varied segments, a myriad of happiness measurement instruments have been formulated. These tools, customized for distinct demographics like workers, caregivers, adolescents, or even cultural backgrounds, ensure nuanced assessments.…”