Financial Insecurity among Side-Hustlers: the Roles of Sense of Control, Perceived Financial Stigma, and Side-Hustle Security

Abstract Within today’s economic environment, financial insecurity has become an increasingly prevalent concern among the employed. Against this backdrop, the current research draws on the Transactional Model of Stress to explore how, why, and when financial insecurity from one’s full-time job may relate to mental health, skill development, and fertility intentions. We propose that the associations between financial insecurity and these outcomes can be explained by sense of control. We further propose that those high in perceived financial stigma may perceive financial insecurity to be particularly threatening, thereby exacerbating the negative relationship between financial insecurity and sense of control. Finally, side-hustle security may weaken the exacerbating effect of financial stigma, resulting in a three-way interaction. We used a sample of 623 full-time employees with a side-hustle from China to test our hypotheses. With data collected at three time points, the results unexpectedly suggested that when financial stigma was low and side-hustle security was high , sense of control mediated the relationships of financial insecurity with mental health, skill development, and fertility intentions. We contribute to the economic stress literature by identifying an underlying mechanism and a boundary condition of the associations between financial insecurity from one’s full-time job with three important outcomes.