Moderating effect of Poverty: Interplay between SDT and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
In addition to examining the universality importance of job autonomy in individual’s workplace
wellbeing across different context, the other way to test the importance of job autonomy is by
examining whether its contribution to wellbeing is constrained by another factor, here the
poverty is introduced.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (1943, 1971) posits that a hierarchy of needs motivates individuals.
The basic level is security needs, following by higher levels of social needs , then self-esteem,
culminating needs for self-actualization. In the hierarchy model, Maslow described one of
security needs as the need to have sufficient material resources for basic survival and as the need
to avoid poverty. Few people would doubt that humans require some material necessities to feel
safe (Kasser and Ahuvia, 2002; Maslow, 1971) and several strands of research suggest that
income as the major source of living material is especially critical for wellbeing when it helps to
avoid poverty and to sustain material resources for basic survival (Diener and Seligman, 2004).
Prior research has already verified that one’s income status is highly related to their wellbeing
due to insufficient work income will lead to lacking food, shelter, heat, and inability to pay bills
and family distress (Vinokur and Schul, 1997). For example, people with wage under the poverty
line (Jackson et al., 2000), and even loss of jobs (Luhmann, Hofmann, Eid, and Lucas, 2012) are
result in low wellbeing.
In the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, autonomy is identified as a kind of self-esteem need in the
second high level of needs, which above the security needs. Maslow (1943) maintained that
striving for physical safety may lead people to overlook their psychological needs. Specifically,
based on his hierarchical need model, he argued that ‘the appearance of a need rests on other
proponent needs; needs or desires must be arranged in hierarchies of prepotency’
(Maslow,1943:91). Because the need for safety is at a lower level in the hierarchy, people’s
functioning may become dominated by the pursuit of financial security need satisfaction as long
as the financial need remains unfulfilled. Thus, the potency of the higher-level psychological
needs may get reduced if the lower-level needs are not satisfied.
However, both Maslow and SDT failed to propose very specific predictions about the interplay
between three basic psychological needs and the security need, as well as their interaction effect on
wellbeing. One way to interpret Maslow’s model is that the financial/physical/material need is more
fundamental when compared to the psychological needs, as the latter needs are situated higher up in
the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid. Thus, from a hierarchical-need perspective, the effect of
psychological need satisfaction may be constrained by income status. Technically, the constraining
role of income on workplace wellbeing may manifest in this way: individuals deprived of financial
security satisfaction may not benefit from the satisfaction of higher-level psychological needs as
much as those who have satisfied their financial security need, which suggests that individual income
may play a moderating role in the association between psychological need satisfaction and
wellbeing. Thus we build a moderating effect model of poverty to investigate the role of financial
security in the relationship between the self-employed and employees (see in Figure 1).
H3: poverty moderates the relationship between job autonomy and workplace wellbeing H3a:
poverty moderates the relationship between job autonomy and workplace wellbeing in the self-
employed group, thereby suggesting that the relationships will be different for the self-employed
with higher income and those who exhibit lower income (intra-group difference) H3b: poverty
moderates the relationship between job autonomy and workplace wellbeing in employee group,
thereby suggesting that the relationships will be different for employees who exhibit higher
income and those who exhibit lower income (intra-group difference)
Figure 2 Model of moderating effect of poverty on the relationship
between job autonomy and workplace wellbeing
Reference
Baron, R. A. (2012). Entrepreneurship: An evidence-based guide. Cheltenham,UK:
Edward Elgar Publishing.
Caliendo, M., and Kopeinig, S. (2008). Some practical guidance for the implementation of
propensity score matching. Journal of Economic Surveys, 22(1), 31-72.
Felstead, A., Gallie, D., and Green, F. (Eds.). (2015). Unequal Britain at Work.
Oxford,UK: Oxford University Press.
Guo, S., and Fraser, M. W. (2010). Propensity score analysis: Statistical methods and
analysis. London,UK: SAGE Publications
Hamilton, B. H. (2000). Does entrepreneurship pay? An empirical analysis of the returns
to self-employment. Journal of Political Economy, 108(3), 604-631.
Joffe, M. M., and Rosenbaum, P. R. (1999). Invited commentary: propensity scores.
American Journal of Epidemiology, 150(4), 327-333.
Lehrer Paul, M., Woolfolk Robert, L., and Sime Wesley, E. (2007). Principles and
Practice of Stress Management. New York, USA: The Guilford Press
Luthans, F., Avolio, B. J., Avey, J. B., and Norman, S. M. (2007). Positive psychological
capital: Measurement and relationship with performance and satisfaction. Personnel
Psychology, 60(3), 541-572.
Rindova, V., Barry, D., and Ketchen, D. J. (2009). Entrepreneuring as emancipation.
Academy of Management Review, 34(3), 477-491.
Rosenbaum, P. R., and Rubin, D. B. (1985). Constructing a control group using
multivariate matched sampling methods that incorporate the propensity score. The
American Statistician, 39(1), 33-38.
Taris, T. W. (2006). Bricks without clay: On urban myths in occupational health
psychology. Work and Stress, 20, 99-104
Uy, M. A., Foo, M. D., and Song, Z. (2013). Joint effects of prior start-up experience and
coping strategies on entrepreneurs’ psychological wellbeing. Journal of Business
Venturing, 28(5), 583-597.
Wiklund, J., Graham, C., Foo, M. D., Bradley, S. W., Shir, N., and Nikolaev, B. (2017).
Entrepreneurship and Wellbeing. Journal of Business Venturing. Call for papers:
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-business-venturing/call-for-papers/entre
preneurship-wellbeing . Accessed: 20 SEP 2017
