Breadwinning: Migrant workers’ family motivation in facing life-threatening events and its performance implications

Abstract

Migrant workers face challenging work and lives, a situation particularly aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike previous theorizations predicting work intention from a self-focused approach, we focus on fundamental, family-focused reasons for engaging in a job. Our work explains why and how committing themselves to work helps migrant workers cope with the threat posed by the pandemic. Drawing on behavioral reasoning theory, we posit that this threat prompts migrant workers to think about the key reason for working, i.e., family motivation. Family motivation further enhances their intended work effort and actual job performance after returning to work. The results derived from two experiments and a two-source, two-wave field study conducted in China provide consistent support for our predictions.