Jump for joy: happiness as the route to increased living standards of entrepreneurs in Zambia

ABSTRACT

Little is known of the effect of entrepreneurs’ happiness on living standards in the world’s developing countries. This study explores (1) the causal relationship of entrepreneurs’ happiness and living standards; and (2) examines the interaction effects of socio-demographics (i.e. gender, age and education) and happiness on living standards in a developing context: Zambia. Following a qualitative pre-study with local experts, we develop a quantitative survey study including a unique sample of 170 entrepreneurs in Zambia. The analyses show that the entrepreneurs are relatively happy and an increasing level of happiness is related to an increasing standard of living. Moreover, the entrepreneurs’ happiness moderated by age (i.e. being older and happy) and education (i.e. being better-educated and happy) is a strong positive determinant of their living standard. The entrepreneurs’ awareness of the factors conducive to being happy, as well as the practitioners focussing on the social conditions of happiness, is instrumental.

KEYWORDS:

• Entrepreneurs
• developing countries
• firm growth
• performance
• small firms
• well-being

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While referring to the same measurable outcome of the entrepreneur’s business, both terms, ‘living standards’ and ‘performance’, are used interchangeably in the remainder of the paper.

2 ‘Western’ refers to high developed countries, such as Belgium, Denmark or Sweden; ‘non-Western’ refers to developing countries such as many in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), including Zambia.

3 As indication of relevance and importance: this paper has been cited 3398 times as per 7 January 2020, according to Google Scholar.

4 The participants in the workshop suggested to measure age in categories instead of asking for a specific number, because of sensitivity and cultural reasons.

5 Other main and interaction effects were considered, including additional control variables (e.g. number of employees at the time of the data collection; founding year of the business). However, no significant effects were observed, and, therefore, these variables were removed in the Methodology section of the paper.