How rural coworking hubs can facilitate well-being through the satisfaction of key psychological needs

Ian Merrell, Anita Füzi, Emma Russell and Gary Bosworth

Local Economy, 2021, vol. 36, issue 7-8, 606-626

Abstract: Once considered an urban phenomenon, rural enterprise hubs (REH) and rural coworking spaces (RCWS) are now increasing in popularity to support entrepreneurial rural communities. Whilst previous research has examined economic and community benefits, a focus on well-being benefits has been overlooked. Framed by self-determination theory, this empirical research investigates whether rural coworking is reported to enhance user’s well-being by fulfilling key psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness. By applying a well-being focus, we found that potential key drivers of rural coworking uptake and durability could be elucidated, in terms of these three needs. In addition, we identified another category of well-being that was fulfilled through engagement with RCWS and REH – namely – ‘communion with nature’. We suggest that considerations of well-being are important to understand how rural coworking can attract and sustain local workers and suggest a future research agenda to further conceptualise well-being effects.

Keywords: Rural coworking spaces; rural enterprise hubs; well-being; self-determination; rural development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02690942221075598 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:loceco:v:36:y:2021:i:7-8:p:606-626

DOI: 10.1177/02690942221075598

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Local Economy from London South Bank University
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().