Spillover Versus Compensation: A Review of the Literature on the Relationship Between Work and Nonwork

This paper reviews the evidence concerning the relationship between workers' experiences on and off the job. Of particular interest is the debate over two rival hypotheses: the "spillover" hypothesis and the "compensation" hypothesis. The former argues that workers' experiences on the job carry over into the nonwork arena, and possibly vice versa, such that there develops a similarity in the patterning of work and nonwork life. The latter marshals several arguments for a negative association between work and nonwork, for example, the contention that the work situation is likely to be deficient in needfulfillment, at least in some respects, for most workers and that they will compensate for these deficiencies in their choices of leisure and family activities. Data from relevant studies support the notions of spillover and compensation under different conditions but, overall, offer more evidence of spillover than compensation. Support for spillover, for example, is reflected in the positive correlations between general types of activities engaged in at work and corresponding types of activities in nonwork. Support is also shown in the positive correlations between subjective reactions to work and to leisure and family life. The most important exceptions to this pattern of spillover concern physical effort on the job. Workers who expend a relatively great amount of physical effort at work are less involved in nonwork activities and less likely to be physically active away from their jobs.