Work centrality and post-award work behavior of lottery winners

Individuals who had won the lottery responded to a survey concerning whether they had continued to work after winning. They were also asked to indicate how important work was in their life using items and scales commonly used to measure work centrality. The authors predicted that whether lottery winners would continue to work would be related to their level of work centrality as well as to the amount of their winnings. Individuals who won large amounts in the lottery would be less likely to quit work if they had relatively greater degrees of work centrality. After controlling for a number of variables (i.e., age, gender, education, occupation, and job satisfaction), results indicated that work centrality and the amount won were significantly related to whether individuals continued to work and, as predicted, the interaction between the two was also significantly related to work continuance.