Life satisfaction in Chinese rural‐to‐urban migrants: Investigating the roles of self‐esteem and affect balance

The goal of the present article is to investigate whether positive and negative affects mediate or moderate the impact of self-esteem on life satisfaction among Chinese rural-to-urban migrants. Participants contained 712 rural-to-urban migrants recruited from four construction sites in China, who were evaluated with Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Positive and Negative Affect Scale, and Satisfaction with Life Scale. Correlation analysis indicated self-esteem positively predicted life satisfaction. In addition, we demonstrated the mediating effects of positive affect and negative affect partially in the links from self-esteem to life satisfaction, but failed to reveal the moderating effects. These findings suggested that affect balance intervention program may benefit the life satisfaction in Chinese rural-to-urban migrants.