Alternative Ethics: The Relationship between the Wealth, Welfare, Work, and Leisure Ethic

Abstract

This study attempted to devise and evaluate four belief systems regarding how people acquire their money and spend their time: the Protestant Work Ethic (P WE) which emphasizes the positive feature of work, the leisure ethic which sees recreation rather than work as the main means to personalfulfillment, the wealth ethic which stresses the accumulation of wealth to ensure independence from others and work, and the welfare ethic which is based on the idea that one should exploit state benefits as a primary source of income. As predicted, the PWE was significantly negatively correlated with the leisure and welfare ethic which were themselves positively correlated. The wealth ethic was significantly correlated with the leisure ethic. Correlations between subscale scores derived from factor analysis and other related measures showed an interesting and predicted pattern of work-related beliefs. Results are discussed in terms of developing and testing belief systems associated with the PWE.