Who are the happy economists in the UK?

In a new article published in the journal Economics Letters (gated; I don't see an ungated version online), Karen Mumford (University of York) and Cristina Sechel (University of Sheffield) used data from 443 academic economists in the UK to investigate the factors associated with job satisfaction. The method was essentially similar to happiness studies, with the question people were asked being: "Overall how satisfied are you with your job these days?", and responses measured on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high). If you substitute the word "job" for "life", then you have one of the standard questions for measuring life satisfaction.

Anyway, they found that:

Our most consistent results occur with the workplace characteristics. Job satisfaction is significantly related to working with proportionately more women (negative); working in London (positive); or working in a co-operative environment (positive). The latter relationship is particularly substantial. Never having had a mentor is negatively related to job satisfaction for these academics. Having a network available for professional advice is positively associated with satisfaction for women, but not for men.

The last points, about mentoring and professional networks, are important and accords with other research that has suggested the importance of mentoring for emerging female economists (for example, see this post from earlier this year). However, professional networks (one of the few differences between men and women in this study) becomes statistically insignificant if you control for self-reported salary (though this reduces the sample size down to 306, and results are not shown separately by gender for this reduced sample).

Overall, it seems that the characteristics of the workplace dominate in terms of their association with job satisfaction. Academic economists in the UK are most satisfied in a collegial and cooperative environment, with access to a supportive mentor. Who would have guessed that?