Life and Workplace Satisfaction and Behaviour Change Ability—An Empirical Study in Japan

This paper analyzes the attributes that would cause behaviour change based on responses to questions about behaviour change, examines how satisfaction with their life is associated with the respondents’ behaviour change, and determines whether there would be any difference in their levels of satisfaction between those who can change their behaviour and those who cannot. Behaviour change has been studied in diverse fields and has gradually been attracting attention. However, we have yet to see much research that discusses the dependent attributes of people’s behaviour change or to what extent behaviour change influences people’s sense of satisfaction in life. In this research, we conducted a factor analysis of responses to surveys to identify behaviour change and examined the dependency of the obtained factors on age, sex, positive thinking, and the degree of self-determination. We also analyzed how behaviour change is associated with life and workplace satisfaction. Our findings revealed that sex, positive thinking, and the degree of self-determination affected all three behaviour change factors. Positive thinking had a positive effect on all three factors, while male dummy had a negative impact on all three factors. The self-determination index positively affected persistence in learning and malleability, but it had a negative impact on receptivity. Age affected only malleability, while male dummy had a positive impact. We have also examined how a person’s ability to change their behaviour affected their satisfaction level in their life and workplace. Our findings showed that malleability, among the behaviour change abilities, played an important role in enhancing the satisfaction level in a person’s life, and demonstrated a statistically significant positive effect on health, stress, income, and relationship with their partner. With regard to the satisfaction level in the workplace, the behaviour change abilities (persistence in learning, malleability, receptivity) had common effects on satisfaction with work environment, job discretion, peers at work, perception of doing a good job, their immediate supervisor, and job security; persistence in learning and malleability had a positive effect, whereas receptivity had a negative impact. On all these items, the strongest impact was made by persistence in learning, and a relatively weak effect was made by receptivity.