The effects of basic psychological need satisfaction during leisure and paid work on global life satisfaction^*

* This article is based in part on a presentation given at the 2015 Alberta Recreation and Parks Association Conference.

Abstract

We investigated whether satisfaction of employees’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and/or relatedness during leisure positively impacted their leisure domain satisfaction (LSAT) and, in turn, whether LSAT positively influenced their global life satisfaction (GLS). To better understand the above, we simultaneously examined these same relationships in the paid work domain. Useable data were collected from 395 adults employed at least 20 h per week. Structural equation modeling indicated that satisfaction of all three needs positively affected LSAT; with autonomy having the greatest effect. In comparison, although autonomy and relatedness need satisfaction positively affected work domain satisfaction (WSAT), competence’s effect was not significant. LSAT and WSAT positively, and age negatively, affected GLS; collectively explaining 48.6% of the total variance. Our findings largely support basic psychological needs theory in both the leisure and work domains and, furthermore, suggest these two contexts are equally effectual in regard to GLS.

Keywords:

• Autonomy
• basic psychological need theory
• competence
• domain
• leisure
• paid work
• relatedness
• structural equation modeling
• well-being

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank those who participated in the study as well as those at the University of Alberta Population Research Lab who collected participants’ responses.

Notes

* This article is based in part on a presentation given at the 2015 Alberta Recreation and Parks Association Conference.

1. A reviewer suggested that work hours could also be a pertinent variable. Consequently, we examined the Pearson correlation coefficients between the number of hours of work per week participants reported and their: (a) leisure domain satisfaction (r = −.08; p > .10); (b) paid work domain satisfaction (r = .00; p > .10); and (c) global life satisfaction (r = −.07; p > .10). Given these results, we did not include this variable in our main analyses.

2. We would like to thank one of the reviewers for pointing out this possibility.