Does Television Affect Our Job Satisfaction? A Moderated Mediation Model Investigating the Effects of TV Time on Next-Day Job Satisfaction

Abstract

People tend to spend much of their leisure time watching TV or videos on their smartphones. We were interested in looking at how this affects job satisfaction the next day. Using Affective Events Theory and sleep research as our theoretical background we hypothesized that TV time would have an indirect effect on job satisfaction. We argued that this effect would be mediated by sleep quality and positive affect and moderated by TV enjoyment. Data was collected using a daily diary design with two daily questionnaires over 10 workdays. A total of 53 participants (n = 303 observations) filled out daily questionnaires on an average of 7.98 days. Results of a multilevel analysis showed that there was no significant spillover effect of TV time in the evening and afternoon on job satisfaction the next day on the within-level. We did not see an effect of TV time on positive affect or of positive affect on job satisfaction on the within-level. These findings contribute to a wider understanding of how TV time has an impact on our daily lives. We discuss our findings, as well as practical implications and limitations in our discussion part.