Financial strain and subjective well-being of unemployed individuals during COVID-19

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has engendered unprecedented challenges and disruptions in nearly every field across the globe. The destabilized economic conditions have resulted in large-scale downsizing and layoffs, particularly in the hospitality and tourism sector which is the focus of the study. This scenario has prompted financial strain and reduced subjective well-being among those individuals who were laid off. Using the conservation of resources (COR) theory, we investigated the impact of financial strain on the subjective well-being of the laid off employees (N=284) in the hospitality and tourism sector through the mediating mechanism of negative affectivity. We also investigated the extent to which this mediated relationship is moderated by the individuals’ core-self evaluations. The results provided support for the hypothesized relationships in the study. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our research.