Exploring Association Between Subjective Well-Being And Ecological Footprint: Panel Data Analysis

Date

2020-05

Authors

Wu, Xiu

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Abstract

<p>One of the important duties of government is to improve people’s happiness. The existing literature has a lot of discussion about the factors that affect Subjective Well-being (SWB), such as income, employment, equality education and Health, indeed, the environmental aspects were nearly ignored. This paper aims to explore the relationship between environmental factors and SWB lead to significantly deepen our understanding of SWB and then give some suggestions to governments.</p> <p>A panel data was collected across 101 countries over the years from 2006 to 2016 from the World Values Survey, World Bank and the global footprint network etc. A series of statistical methods such as partial correlation, simple OLS, stepwise regression and fixed effects panel regression were carried out to examine the spatial-temporal association between SWB and Ecological Footprint (EF).</p> <p>Our empirical results show that increase of SWB is associated with change of rich level, not with time increase. In PC, the conclusion of TBC having significantly positive influences on SWB leads to pursuing happiness is not conflict with environmental protection. ECROP, EGRAZING, and EBUILT has significantly positive influences on SWB, EFISH has significantly negative influences on SWB. The number of EF factors being significant to SWB are increased with rich levels of countries, generating higher possibility of impacts on SWB. In upper-level countries and top-level countries, carbon emission is negatively significant related to SWB, so low-carbon daily life is the good way to increase SWB. In three regression comparison, fixed effects panel regression models are alternatives of SWB survey method. Time-series fixed effects panel regression model is the most available among three types regression models. EF is invert u-shaped link to SWB, which is satisfied EKC hypothesis. We propose this study for pursuing the continuous improvement of SWB under the premise of maximization of human development index (higher income, education and health) and minimization of public policy of EF per capita.</p> <p>We argue that with the continuous improvement of the human development index and the popularity of the concept of ecological protection, the low-carbon circular economy model will be underlying, sustainable development trend from being enforced by the government to people's subjective consciousness. Panel data analysis is an effective way to study this issue.</p>

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Keywords

Subjective well-being, Ecological Footprint, Panel data analysis

Citation

Wu, X. (2020). <i>Exploring association between subjective well-being and ecological footprint</i> (Unpublished thesis). Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.

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