A key question for effective policy design is the extent to which, ceteris paribus, individuals respond to economic and other incentives. Standard economic theory suggests that they are rational actors and will maximise their expected utility. People’s values do not normally feature in the analysis as they are expected to be either perfectly aligned with what works best, or irrelevant to decision-making. This paper addresses the role of values and outcomes in the context of changes in labour supply. Our results suggest that once controlling for various socio-demographic variables people do take into account both their values and their life satisfaction (as an indicator of utility) in their labour market behaviour, and do so in a way which appears reasonably close to rationality. However, we also find that overall outcomes do not improve after the changes, suggesting that values may be inconsistent with optimal outcomes, or that people underestimate the knock on effects of changes in one dimension of time allocation on other factors affecting their overall utility.