Understanding the Relation between Gratitude and Life Satisfaction among Adolescents in a Post-Disaster Context: Mediating Roles of Social Support, Self-Esteem, and Hope

The present study assesses the underlying mechanism of gratitude on life satisfaction among adolescents in a post-disaster context. The mediating roles of social support, self-esteem, and hope are also examined in the relation between gratitude and life satisfaction. Two and a half years after the Ya’an earthquake, 397 adolescents were selected from the most severely affected county of Lushan to answer self-reported questionnaires. After controlling for trauma severity, gratitude can have a positive association with life satisfaction through the following routes: one one-mediator paths of hope, two two-mediator paths of social support via self-esteem and self-esteem via hope, and one three-mediator path from social support to hope via self-esteem. These findings suggested that following a natural disaster, adolescent survivors’ gratitude may have an indirect and positive relation with life satisfaction by social support, self-esteem, and hope.