“I’ll look after my health, later”: A replication and extension of the procrastination–health model with community-dwelling adults

Initial investigations into the links between procrastination and health in student samples implicated stress-related and behavioural pathways. However, it is unknown if these relations are the same for community-dwelling adults, or if alternative measures of procrastination and health behaviors will yield the same results. To replicate and extend previous findings 254 adults recruited from the community and the Internet completed self-report measures of procrastination, health, stress, wellness and household safety behaviours. Consistent with previous work, procrastination was associated with higher stress, more acute health problems, and the practice of fewer wellness behaviours. Procrastinators also reported fewer household safety behaviours, and less frequent dental and medical check-ups. The structural equation modeling analyses revealed that stress fully mediated the procrastination–health relationship, but health behaviours did not when the combined effect with stress was considered. These findings suggest that in addition to hindering a variety of health-related behaviours, procrastination may confer additional risk for increased stress, and consequently more health problems.