Entrepreneurship and Subjective Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Psychological Functioning
研究了心理功能（如自主性和能力感）在创业与主观幸福感之间的中介作用，基于欧洲社会调查数据发现创业通过提升心理功能显著增强幸福感。
Well-being is an essential outcome of engagement in entrepreneurship, but the pathway from self-employment to well-being is poorly understood. To address this, we develop a model in which psychological functioning—purposeful engagement with life, realization of personal talents and capabilities, and fulfillment of intrinsic needs such as autonomy and competence—mediates the relationship between entrepreneurship and subjective well-being. We test our model with data from the European Social Survey using structural equation modeling and a series of robustness tests (e.g., propensity score matching estimators and accounting for model uncertainty). Results suggest that entrepreneurship is associated with substantial benefits in terms of psychological functioning—both personal and social—which almost entirely mediate the relationship between entrepreneurship and subjective well-being. These findings highlight psychological functioning as a critical pathway between entrepreneurship and subjective well-being.