RT Journal Article
T1 Becoming self-employed from inactivity: an in-depth analysis of satisfaction
A1 Justo, Raquel
A1 Congregado Ramírez de Aguilera, Emilio
A1 Román Díaz, María Concepción
K1 Satisfaction
K1 Well-being
K1 Self-employment
K1 Entrepreneurship
K1 Inactivity
K1 Paid employment
K1 Employment status
K1 Matching estimators
K1 EU-15
AB Inactive individuals represent a pool of potential labour whose activation entails economic and social advantages. Additionally, being active allows individuals to cover their basic psychological needs—autonomy, competence and relatedness—which leads to greater satisfaction through self-determination. We posit that self-employment may be an attractive alternative because its nonpecuniary aspects may suit their needs better. Using data from the European Community Household Panel, we applied propensity score matching techniques to analyse the change in satisfaction with main activity of inactive individuals becoming self-employed compared to those becoming employees and those remaining inactive. We further perform separate analyses for homemakers, retirees and students to account for heterogeneity within inactivity. We find that self-employment is associated with more satisfaction than remaining inactive in the case of retirees and homemakers, while students tend to experience a larger increase in satisfaction when entering self-employment compared to paid employment. The implications of these results for activation and entrepreneurship policies are discussed.
PB Springer
SN 0921-898X
YR 2021
FD 2021
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/27759
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/27759
LA eng
NO Justo, R., Congregado, E. & Román, C. Becoming self-employed from inactivity: an in-depth analysis of satisfaction. Small Bus Econ 56, 145–187 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-019-00212-2
NO This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad) under Grant number ECO2017-86402-C2-2-R; and Regional Government of Andalusia (Junta de Andalucía) through Research Group SEJ-487 (Spanish Entrepreneurship Research Group – SERG).
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 2 jun 2026