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What motivates welfare attitudes during economic crises? While existing research highlights self-interest, this conclusion rests on a predominant conceptualization of citizens’ crisis experiences as personal job loss. However, during economic downturns, people are likely to also witness colleagues or distant others being laid off, which might affect welfare attitudes for reasons beyond self-interest. This article analyses how personal job loss as well as that of colleagues and acquaintances during the Great Recession is related to welfare attitudes in the UK, Germany and Sweden, where welfare regimes and crisis policies differ systematically. Based on Eurobarometer data from 2010, the findings reveal that the importance of personal job loss as well as that of colleagues and acquaintances varies cross-nationally. In the liberal UK – with its modest crisis response – demand for greater public welfare provision is associated with personal job loss. In social-democratic Sweden – with its active crisis management – demand for greater welfare provision is associated with acquaintances’ job loss. In conservative Germany – with its labour market insider-focused crisis response – no clear picture emerges. These findings support a sociological perspective emphasizing the importance of other-regarding concerns for welfare attitudes and the role of institutions in structuring people’s self-interest and normative orientations.
This paper presents a follow-up study of Markovits et al.’s (2014) comparison of large samples of Greek employees before and at the onset of the economic crisis. Now at the crisis’ peak, we again sampled data from 450 employees about their job satisfaction, organizational commitment, regulatory focus, and burnout. Overall, compared to the two samples before, employees’ job attitudes further decrease with lower normative and higher continuance commitment, lower (extrinsic and intrinsic) job satisfaction and both lower promotion and (somewhat surprisingly) even lower prevention orientation. Expanding previous studies, results show that satisfaction and commitment are also related to burnout and that those participants who are currently employed but had experienced personal unemployment during the crisis showed more negative attitudes and higher burnout.