What Makes Workers Happy? Anticipated Rewards and Job Satisfaction

Using data collected from over 9,400 employees in Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Serbia, across a wide variety of workplaces and sectors, we identify the extrinsic and intrinsic rewards that workers desire, and the desirability of rewards they expect to receive. We use regression analysis to evaluate the association between anticipated rewards and job satisfaction, hypothesizing that the desirability of the reward matters more for extrinsic than intrinsic rewards. We find that anticipated extrinsic rewards tend to have a greater influence on job satisfaction if these rewards are important to that particular worker. Anticipated intrinsic rewards appear to be equally beneficial to all workers, regardless of their desirability. Anticipated rewards which have the largest effect on job satisfaction include additional pay, respect of co-workers, and more freedom on the job.

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