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Happiness in the Air: How Does a Dirty Sky Affect Subjective Well-Being?

SSRN Electronic Journal
  • 0
    Citations
  • 1,684
    Usage
  • 17
    Captures
  • 0
    Mentions
  • 0
    Social Media
Metric Options:   Counts1 Year3 Year

Metrics Details

  • Usage
    1,684
    • Abstract Views
      1,518
    • Downloads
      166
  • Captures
    17
  • Ratings
    • Download Rank
      360,099

Article Description

Existing studies that evaluate the impact of pollution on human beings understate its negative effect on cognition, mental health, and happiness. This paper attempts to fill in the gap via investigating the impact of air quality on subjective well-being using China as an example. By matching a unique longitudinal dataset at the individual level, which includes self-reported happiness and mental well-being measures, with contemporaneous local air quality and weather information according to the exact date of interview, we show that worse air quality reduces shorter-term hedonic happiness and increases the rate of depressive symptoms. However, life satisfaction, an evaluative measure of happiness, is largely immune from immediate bad air quality.

Bibliographic Details

Xin Zhang; Xiaobo Zhang; Xi Chen

Elsevier BV

air quality; mental well-being; life satisfaction; hedonic happiness; China

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