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Are Happier People More Willing to Make Income Sacrifices to Protect the Environment?

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Abstract

There is considerable amount of debate about the effect of affluence on environmental concern. The empirical literature is inconclusive on this debate. Increasingly, more studies are examining individual level correlates of environmental concern. On the other hand, a large number of studies examine the correlates of happiness. An important aspect of the economics of happiness literature emphasizes the relationship between environmental quality or concern and happiness. A few scholars suggest that happiness may influence environmental concern. Yet studies on whether happiness affects environmental concern are lacking. This paper empirically investigates the effect of happiness on environmental concern in a cross-national sample. Using data for 18 countries, I find that happier people are more willing to make income sacrifices to protect the environment. This finding holds for residents of both African and developed countries.

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Notes

  1. Happiness, well-being, subjective well-being and life satisfaction are often used interchangeably, especially in the economics of happiness literature (see e.g., Easterlin 2005).

  2. I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this paper.

  3. Although Duroy (2008) explores the relationship between happiness and various measures of environmental concern, the study’s main focus was to test the “affluence” hypothesis. Consequently, the study uses aggregate variables.

  4. Inglehart’s thesis is consistent with Maslow’s (1954) hierarchy of needs. That is, environmental concern is a higher order need that people with lower incomes would generally not focus on. Instead, they focus on the basic needs for human survival.

  5. This problem is empirically addressed later in the paper. I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for comments on this issue.

  6. Although most of the environmental issues questions were asked in most countries, preliminary inspection of the data revealed that the questions used to generate the dependent variables in this study were not asked in some countries. For instance, among advanced countries, they were not asked in the United Kingdom, France, and Netherlands.

  7. I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue.

  8. They wonder if the relationship between willingness to pay to prevent environmental pollution and membership in environmental organization is a result of a selection bias. Using instrumental variable estimation, they find consistent results between 2SLS results and their ordered probit results, suggesting a lack of endogenity.

  9. OLS regressions are also run for the models (1) to check for multicollinearity, and (2) for robustness checks. I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for requesting that tests for multicollinearity be conducted and reported.

  10. I owe this to a reviewer who suggested that I check for multicollinearity.

  11. Because this study is a micro-study, macro-level variables such as GNP per capita were not used. Also, the individual variables were not averaged at the national level because the individual (rather than a country) is the unit of analysis.

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  1. Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Iddisah Sulemana

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Sulemana, I. Are Happier People More Willing to Make Income Sacrifices to Protect the Environment?. Soc Indic Res 127, 447–467 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-0960-3

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