ABSTRACT. There is presently considerable advocacy for ‘wellbeing public policy’ (WPP), especially as part of the enthusiasm to go ‘beyond GDP’. While this aim has great merit, this paper highlights the potential for unintended negative consequences from wellbeing policy at this time owing to a lack of theory in the field. We analyse the potential for conceptual confusion, incorrect aggregation, poor robustness and external validity of policy evaluations, inept interventions, and the Lucas critique. More widespread use of quasi-experimental methods in WPP research will go some way towards addressing these issues but would be of much greater marginal value if combined with deeper and more sophisticated theorising. This is especially the case because theory is required merely to interpret wellbeing data. We discuss what sort of theory would be ideal and where WPP could proceed fruitfully even in the absence of such theory.

ABSTRACT. This study identifies the impact of publicly disclosing government anti-corruption investigations on individual life satisfaction. We combine data relating to the public disclosure of investigations on senior officials across provinces in China with a longitudinal household survey recording individuals’ self-reported life satisfaction. Employing an individual-fixed effects estimation, we find that these disclosures, on average, appear to diminish mental well-being. However, this main effect masks considerable heterogeneity with the estimated impact being sharply moderated by political trust. Specifically, we find that individuals with low political trust undergo an estimated reduction in their mental well-being in response to the public disclosure of anti-corruption investigations, whereas for those with high political trust the public disclosure of anti-corruption investigations is well-being enhancing. Our proposed explanation is that publicly disclosing anti-corruption investigations can be both a positive or negative ‘signal’ and individuals interpret this signal in a way that supports their existing pre-conceived notion of the trustworthiness of the government, displaying a form of confirmation bias. These findings highlight a possible disincentive for governments to tackle issues of concern for the public: by doing so they may make the issue more salient which could reduce well-being and government support, particularly in the case of low political trust.

ABSTRACT. We analyse whether people value free speech differently depending on their socio-economic status (proxied both by relative income and by education levels). Free speech may either be a ‘luxury good’ valued more highly by high-income earners and the well-educated, or a ‘necessary good’ valued more highly by (more marginalised) low-income earners and the less-educated.

Our empirical analysis builds on prior theoretical contributions from the law and economics field and from the (sparse) empirical economic analyses of free speech. We apply two different lenses to analyse the issue. First, we test whether people's stated preferences regarding the importance of free speech reflects their socio-economic status. Second, we test whether the relationship between a country's degree of free speech and individual subjective wellbeing (life satisfaction) is moderated by the individual's socio-economic status.

Our analysis controls for personal and macroeconomic factors and for other human rights. We use two separate surveys (World Values Survey and LatinoBarometer) to measure the individual's subjective wellbeing, socio-economic status and other personal characteristics, and we use two separate databases (CIRIGHTS and VDEM) to measure free speech and other human rights at the country-year level. Thus we have four combinations of data to test the relationships. We use World Bank data to control for macroeconomic variables and we control also for country and wave fixed effects.

We find that individuals who have lower income or education levels value free speech the most, implying that free speech has an empowerment effect.

ABSTRACT. [Background and Aims] According to financial socialization theory and empirical studies, parental financial socialization— the process in which individuals learn about money management—has long-term implications for individuals’ well-being, and such associations were mediated by individuals’ behaviors of handling money (i.e., financial behaviors hereafter; Gudmunson & Danes, 2011; LeBaron et al., 2022; Li et al., 2019, 2020, 2022).

In this study, we extended the existing literature by investigating three aims.

Aim 1: We investigated indirect associations between parental financial socialization during growing up and Hong Kong young adults’ well-being via financial behaviors during COVID-19

Notably, because parents teach offspring about not only spending/budgeting/saving money but also giving/sharing money, our indicators of financial behaviors included well-studied healthy money management (e.g., spending within budget; Dew & Xiao, 2011) and financial enabling (i.e., a less healthy financial behavior of giving so much money to others; Britt, 2016).

Considering finance as an important factor in many aspects of life, our indicators of well-being included financial well-being and hope(lessness).

Aim 2: We investigated how the associations in Aim 1 differed between young adults in higher-SES households and young adults in lower-SES households, considering socioeconomic status a stratification system in the access to and management of finance (George-Jackson & Cast, 2015) and because of the economic disparity in Hong Kong.

Aim 3: We investigated how the associations in Aim 1 differed between young adults who experienced income loss and young adults who did not, because individuals may change financial behaviors due to the economic disruption imposed by COVID-19 (Truong et al., 2022).

[Methods]

From 2022 March to April, we collected data from 604 Hong Kong young adults (aged 18-30 years old) via Qualtrics.

Parental financial socialization, healthy money management, financial enabling, financial well-being, and hopelessness were assessed using existing scales. Family SES was assessed using the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status. Income changes during COVID-19 were assessed using a self-developed item.

Data were analyzed with structural equation modeling (SEM) and in AMOS 28.

[Results]

Aim 1: On one hand, adequate parental financial socialization was related to high levels of financial well-being via healthier money management. On the other hand, adequate parental financial socialization was related to high levels of financial enabling, which in turn were associated with low levels of financial well-being and high levels of hopelessness.

Aim 2: Differences existed in associations from financial behaviors (including healthy money management and financial enabling) to well-being (including financial well-being and hopelessness).

Aim 3: Differences existed in (1) associations from parental financial socialization to healthy money management and (2) associations from financial behaviors (including healthy money management and financial enabling) to well-being (including financial well-being and hopelessness).

[Discussion]

We found that parental financial socialization was associated with Hong Kong young adults’ well-being via young adults’ financial behaviors. However, instead of being unilaterally beneficial, parental financial socialization in Hong Kong society was a double-edged sword. Besides, associations among parental financial socialization, financial behaviors, and well-being varied by family SES and income changes during COVID-19.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to explore the gender differences in public individual financial well-being and resilience at the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact of resilience on financial well-being. In the current study, a cross-sectional survey was conducted, using the Financial Well-Being Scale and the Resilience Scale to measure 3884 individuals in China. We made the following conclusions: First, the level of resilience in males was significantly higher than in females. Second, the financial well-being of males was significantly higher than that of females. Third, individual resilience had no significant effect on financial well-being. Therefore, during the COVID-19 epidemic, more attention should be paid to the improvement and cultivation of individual resilience, and the implementation of precise psychological intervention measures for individuals will help improve the financial well-being at a reasonable level in the face of public health emergencies.

ABSTRACT. The concept of financial insecurity has been proposed to capture significant threats to the financial sustainability of households, which may be more widespread than monetary poverty. In fact, a person located in any position of the distribution of income can perceive insecurity. In this vein, financial insecurity can be understood as the anxiety or stress that persons feel when they experience or anticipate future economic hazards from which it would be difficult to recover. Some examples of life course adverse events that would represent economic threats are the death of the breadwinner's family, and the unemployment or retirement of a family member. These events will likely result in unfavourable changes in the household's financial situation, such as a reduction in income, the inability to make ends meet, or the incapacity to face unexpected expenses.

Literature shows that the worsening in the financial situation would be associated with reductions in wellbeing. This decrease in persons' quality of life may affect a large range of spheres because their behaviour will be modified to mitigate the current risk, for instance, by reducing private spending, decreasing investment in children's education or postponing fertility. Likewise, financial insecurity can have important deleterious effects, both on physical and mental health.

This paper aims at studying the correlates of the financial insecurity in Spain as a comprehensive phenomenon.

Our focus is Spain because for decades this country registers one of the most elevated unemployment rates of the European Union, year after year the number of working poor is increasing, presents a high old-age dependency rate and the Spanish households registered a great growth of the indebtedness after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

From a methodological point of view, we first defined a financial insecurity index by synthesizing three indicators: drops in income, the minimum income and the incapacity to face unexpected expenses, using longitudinal micro-data from the EU-SILC over the period 2013-2020.

Second, we used pooled cross-section over the period 2014-2020 and estimated several statistical models where the financial insecurity index is the dependent variable. We used fractional regression models that allow studying the association between the financial insecurity of the Spanish households and a set of socioeconomic variables.

The results of our estimates indicate that the individual characteristics that increase the probability of experiencing financial insecurity are being a woman and being unemployed. Financial insecurity also increases with family size. Conversely, having secondary and tertiary education (versus primary education) reduces the likelihood of financial insecurity. Living in partner, the presence of senior adults in the household and being the owner of the dwelling also reduce the probability of financial insecurity. These socioeconomic characteristics should be considered for the design of government programmes to promote the wellbeing of families.

ABSTRACT. Piotr Bialowolski (Associate Editor, Journal of Consumer Affairs), Xiaomin Li (Associate Editor, Family Finance | Journal of Social and Personal Relationships) and Jing Jian Xiao (Editor, Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning) provide an introduction to publishing in journals on consumer financial well-being.

ABSTRACT. According to the UN report “State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples”, about 370 million indigenous people belonging to five thousand different peoples live around the world. This noteworthy presence of indigenous peoples have received increasing attention in multilateral meetings, mass media outlets, and science due to the countless forms of violence they suffer and the perceived importance of their practices and knowledge in facing the climate crisis. However, there is an intrinsic challenge in working with indigenous peoples, since the category “indigenous” indicates a territorial and cultural contrast with non-indigenous people, implying significant differences in worldviews (what Roy Wagner called “culture shock” and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro called “unavoidable misconception”). When someone ignores this difference (both physical and symbolic), they strip away the “indigenous” in the other. Thus, inquiring ethically about any topic in relation to indigenous peoples asks us to go back to fundamentals (epistemology, ontology) and assume them to be one of many. This is especially important when dealing with a topic with as much political and social impact as happiness (e.g. Gallup’s World Happiness Report and OECD’ How’s Life?). In this research we questioned the adequacy of the comprehensive assessments of the Science of Well-being (SWB) concerning indigenous ideas of happiness, like teko porã, sumak kawsay, liyan, and buen vivir. From our two-year research with the Guarani Mbyá (Brazil) on teko porã (literally, “living beautiful”) and the literature on happiness and indigenous people, we proposed four parameters for a possible and more appropriate assessment of teko porã (and, potentially, many indigenous ideas of happiness). First, we must determine, with the community, the spatial and social perimeter to which the idea of happiness will be defined and to which it will refer. Second, we must map and build, with the community, the roles of those who integrate this perimeter in the assessment. Third, those who are part of the perimeter must identify purposes for such an assessment. Finally, the construct of happiness, as well as its assessment process, should be reviewed periodically, adapting to changes in the perimeter. In short, these four parameters substantiate an ever provisional assessment that is the result of a participatory community process. This is similar to participatory research conducted in indigenous contexts, like Mandy Yap’s research with the Yawuru people of Australia, and non-indigenous context, like Mark Fabian and Anna Alexandrova’s work with the Turn2us institution in the UK. We understand that the traditional comprehensive assessments of the SWB are useful and representative of certain groups of people, but do not contemplate the entire plurality of ontologies and epistemologies. They exclude minorities from their development and, consequently, distort the scope of results. Depending on the way these assessments are used, they might even obliterate the idea of “indigenous”. Thus, it is important to recognize the limitations of the SWB approaches and integrate new theoretical perspectives and actors into the debates so that indigenous and non-indigenous worldviews can cohabit. Such dialogue is timely and necessary for the maturing of the area.

ABSTRACT. Latin Americans report, on average, high well-being levels. Data on life satisfaction from the World Value Survey do place the region at top in the world (Rojas 2020). Life satisfaction is not only high in the region, but it is also higher than what would be expected for Latin Americans’ situation, as it is depicted by some commonly used social and economic indicators. Data from the Gallup World Poll also indicates that positive affect is outstandingly high in the region, with the top eight countries in the world being from Latin America; in addition, Latin American’s contentment levels are higher than expected (Rojas 2018). Latin Americnans’ well-being is higher than what would be expected for their economic, social, and institutional settings, as measured by the World Happiness Report’s six-factor model, which includes: income, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption (Helliwell et al. 2015). High well-being in Latin America is considered a paradox because it does not correspond to the region’s ranking according to commonly used development indicators -such as GDP and HDI-. What explains high well-being under not so good socio-economic and institutional conditions in Latin America? This paper develops the concept of person-based interpersonal relations, and it explores empirically explores its relevance in explaining life satisfaction. It is shown that it is through these person-based interpersonal relations that people make sense of life and enjoys it. Most research on well-being and interpersonal relations has emphasized the instrumental and civic role of relationships; the social capital literature approaches close relationships as a source of affective and material support, and concepts such as networking and social cohesion are emphasized in civic relationships. This paper moves aways from the social-capital literature to study person-based interpersonal relations -relationships among people who know each other and who take their time to know each other- and the role they play in jointly enjoying the journey of life. It is in the abundance and nature of close relationships where people enjoy and finds value in life. The paper relies on databases from United States, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico to empirically show that a combination of good quality and high quantity of person-based interpersonal relations substantially contributes to explain high well-being in Latin America.

ABSTRACT. This mostly conceptual and review article attempts to start resolving the apparent contradiction between happy Colombians despite unlivable Colombia. Colombia is one of the several very happiest countries, and at the same time apparently unlivable–by Western standards–Colombia’s poor, corrupt, dangerous, and roads and ports are bad, too. But objective livability of a society measured in terms of money/consumption/ infrastructure misses two points: 1) already very basic commodities are good enough to satisfy human needs and produce wellbeing; 2) non-commodities such as personal freedom and social connection not only matter, but also are hampered by excessive pursuit of commodities. For instance, impeccable organization and physical infrastructure such as that in Singapore or richest parts of the US not only is unnecessary and insufficient for livability and happiness, but it may actually decrease them by: 1) having to focus on what’s unimportant and overwork, and 2) by making environment and interaction inhuman, sanitized, hospital/airport-like. Paper argues that the world has much to learn from Colombia how to be happy–it is a real paradise. Yet another possibility that we cannot fully rule out is that ignorance is a bliss–it is a fool’s paradise.

ABSTRACT. Data about subjective well-being and life satisfaction are relatively new in the policy domain in Latin America, explaining why subjective well-being indicators are not prioritized in many governments' agendas. However, national statistical offices in the region are increasingly interested in adding and using the information provided by subjective well-being metrics but need to be better equipped to use the power of subjective well-being metrics to understand and address social issues. Colombia is at this intersection. Since 2017, the central government has collected information on subjective well-being metrics, but policymakers need to arrive at this discussion. Aiming at promoting a broad discussion and use of well-being metrics, the Human Development Report promoted by the United Nations, including for the first time in 2023, an analysis of subjective well-being in the county and its trajectory after COVID-19. The report section on subjective well-being in Colombia informs about a small but steady reduction of subjective well-being in the country since 2017. The implications of poverty, informal employment, perceptions of inequality, and poor health on life satisfaction of Colombians. The report also presents a focused analysis of Cali, the third-largest city in the country that has collected city-level data on subjective well-being for almost a decade. The Cali case shows how granular information on subjective well-being could better inform local policies to improve the quality of life in urban settings. This research capitalizes on the opportunity provided by the pandemic to open a policy window for more extensive use of subjective well-being data in the policymaking context in Colombia. The pandemic created the conditions to evaluate what is most important to foster a good life and the role of governments in providing the habilitating conditions for enhancing the population's well-being. Due to the pandemic, people's emotions, mental health, and trust in institutions gained increasing notoriety in the country. The narrative change that provides the crisis generated by the pandemic may provide a policy opportunity for more extensive use of subjective well-being data in the policymaking domain in developing countries that are less familiar with subjective well-being information.

ABSTRACT. Many immigrants struggle to integrate into host societies, despite the frequent long-term benefits of integration for immigrants and host societies. This article aims to increase understandings of immigrants’ experiences and obstacles in the daily socio-cultural integration process by examining the understudied impact of daily integration behaviors on momentary happiness. The daily experiences of 213 immigrants from the United States in Germany were captured, using a day reconstruction method. Our panel fixed-effects estimates show that immigrants who were not fluent in the host country’s majority language generally felt happier when communicating in their mother tongue, as opposed to the majority language. Moreover, interacting with majority group members negatively affected less-acculturated immigrants’ momentary happiness. By contrast, socio-cultural integration related positively to immigrants’ enduring happiness. Our results suggest that socio-cultural integration is an investment involving short-term costs to happiness, with important daily obstacles being the cost to momentary happiness of speaking the majority language and, to a lesser extent, interacting with majority group members. We argue that integration behaviors’ short-term costs also occur in many other migration contexts. The revealed short-term costs can increase understandings of immigrants’ integration struggles and related outcomes, including segregation and loneliness, and decreasing the costs may improve socio-cultural integration trajectories.

ABSTRACT. Migrants leave their home country to achieve a better life for themselves or their family. Based on this assumption, an increasing amount of research on migration and quality-of-life has been conducted in recent years. In addition to work-related outcomes, subjective indicators are now increasingly used to assess whether the migration objective of a better life is actually achieved. However, research in this area so far mostly focuses on one specific form of migration: planned, voluntary, mostly economically motivated labour migration. In this regard, there are now first solid findings, theoretical approaches and basic understandings of explanatory mechanisms such as selection, loss of status or social comparison. In contrast, little is known about the Quality-of-Life of forced migrants, who leave their country involuntarily and often without sufficient preparation, and at times even without explicitly choosing their destination country.

A major difference between labour migration and forced migration is that in the latter case, the country of destination decides on the right to stay only after arrival. Yet, asylum seekers’ future life chances (individual and those of family members) highly depend on the host country’s decision on their asylum application: A refugee status entails a temporary, but secure residence status and certain rights, such as access to integration programmes and to the labour market. On the other side, persons with a rejected asylum application are partly denied these opportunities, they are legally obliged to leave the country, and constantly face the risk of being deported. Nonetheless, they frequently stay in host countries for extended periods of time.

I argue that externally imposed differences in life chances between recognized and rejected asylum seekers lead to variations in subjective well-being, such as life satisfaction. The proposed contribution gives insights into our first results based on the German IAB-BAMF-SOEP survey of refugees. Using Propensity-Score-Matching to account for possible selection bias, and multivariate regression modelling of pooled 2016 to 2020 data, I compare the subjective wellbeing of recognized versus rejected asylum applicants. Thereby, I provide theoretical and empirical insights into the life realities of a marginalized group that so far has been neglected in quality-of-life research.

ABSTRACT. While we know much about the impact of immigration for economic well-being, we know comparatively little about the consequences for subjective well-being. Across multiple indicators, and using both individual fixed-effects and an instrumental variable strategy, we demonstrate how there are subjective well-being ‘winners and losers’, when it comes to the relationship between immigration and well-being. Considering the overall population-level impact, we find that any subjective well-being impact associated with inflows of migrants into local areas is small, but this masks considerable heterogeneity. For natives with high openness or trust, inflows of migrants into their local area appears to be well-being enhancing, but the opposite is true for natives with low openness or trust. Drawing on these findings, we propose that the sharp polarisation on immigration issues is largely predicated on differences in underlying psychological dispositions where many people are predisposed to be apprehensive towards demographic change and all it entails.

ABSTRACT. For many employees, commuting to work is a daily and time-consuming activity. Satisfaction with commuting, however, has rarely been researched, although it is expected to be associated with subjective well-being (SWB) and to yield important insights for science, policy and practice. Previously, studies pointed out that many commuters are unsatisfied with their commute, e.g. with their commuting duration. Additionally, over the past years, studies have also shown a steady increase of commuting distance and duration in many industrialized nations. However, validated scales for measuring commuting satisfaction are still rare. Therefore, this paper first introduces the Commuting Satisfaction Scale (CSS). Second, the effect of external factors such as commuting length and duration, means of transport or location on commuting satisfaction is analyzed. Subsequently, it is examined how commuting satisfaction is related to the SWB of employees. The questionnaire was carried out as an online survey in 2019 among employees from the German Foreign Service (N=1,845; response rate=29.2%). The study covers cities in more than 150 countries around the world. The newly developed CSS captures the cognitive evaluation dimension of commuting satisfaction by assessing the individual’s satisfaction with seven key aspects of commuting: duration, comfort, crowding/congestion, reliability, safety, risk of accidents and behavior of others (reliability: α = .87; ω = .88). It also includes relevant modes of travel: car, public transport and walking/cycling. To assess SWB, common and validated measures were included, such as overall life satisfaction, perceived stress, self-rated health and the Short-Form-Health Survey (SF-12). The results show that the longer the commute (in minutes), the less satisfied respondents are with their commute. The farther the place of work is from the place of residence (in kilometers), the lower the satisfaction with the commute. The characteristics of the location and the built environment also have an impact on commuting satisfaction. We find significant differences for commuting satisfaction across residential locations. In particular, the employees in Vienna indicate the highest commuting satisfaction with around 4.2 scale points (out of a maximum of 5 points), while those in Pretoria indicate the lowest with around 2.0 points. Another finding is that commute satisfaction differs by mode of transportation. Employees who use public transportation report the highest satisfaction with 3.8 scale points. They are followed by those who walk (3.6) or bike (3.5) to work. The least satisfied are those who drive a car or ride a motorcycle, with a scale score of 3.0. One explanation could be that in metropolitan areas with a high traffic density and a comparatively well-developed public transport system – as they are predominantly present in our sample – the use of public transport is more attractive. In addition, we find that the higher the commuting satisfaction, the better the SWB, whereas the correlation is stronger for overall life satisfaction (r = .39) than for the other SWB indicators (r ≈ .13). In summary, the various aspects of commuting satisfaction should be given greater consideration than they have been in the past in measures to improve employee well-being.

ABSTRACT. Inspired by the socio-ecological model of well-being, we examined the relative importance of factors contributing to three dimensions of well-being (child, parent, and family) during the COVID-19 pandemic in a sample of 536 participants from the Maritime provinces in Canada, collected in 2021. A cross-sectional survey collected information about experiences during the pandemic (e.g., changes in family life and well-being). Well-being was assessed with three single-item measures on positive change in the life of children, parents, and families during the pandemic. This study involved 21 predictor variables (e.g., change in time spent on various family activities). Using multiple regression and measures of relative importance based on the Lindeman, Merenda and Gold (lmg) method, we identified the variables most important to predicting well-being. Twenty-one predictors accounted for 21% of the variance in child well-being, 25% in parent well-being, and 36% in family well-being. Well-being at all three levels (child, parent, and family) shared the same top predictor (family closeness). The top six predictors of well-being at each level were related to leisure (e.g., play) and time-use (e.g., to prepare meals, engage in self-care, and rest). The effect sizes were smaller for child well-being than at the parent or family level, suggesting there may be important predictors of child well-being not accounted for in these analyses. This study may inform family-level programming and policy that seeks to promote well-being for children and their families.

ABSTRACT. Parents are facing different challenges in the family life cycle and family-centered public welfare aims to address these challenges and to support parents. Research on well-being shows that the familial context is important for the inherited endowment with well-being, and that familial stress and disorder are detrimental for well-being. Thus, family-centered public welfare supports current well-being of all family members and well-being of future generations. Yet, in pandemic times, the supplying institutions faced restrictions that enormously limited their services (see Lüken-Klaßen, Neumann, Elsas 2020, 2021). We use a two-wave survey (years 2020 and 2021) among all (N=720) approved family centres and counselling agencies that offer these family-related services in Bavaria, one of the larger German states, and analyze how the pandemic-related restrictions shifted the focus of family-centered public welfare services from maintaining well-being to alleviating ill-being. We do so by dividing the portfolio of family-centered welfare services into two types: services that focus on maintaining or restoring well-being and services that focus on preventing and alleviating ill-being. The former type aims to strengthen the engagement of parents with their children via education (e.g. parenting classes) and stimulation of peer learning (e.g. drop-in parents breakfast) so that parents experience their potentials and opportunities. The other type of services supports families who are threatened by ill-being, e.g., those who are overburdened with upbringing their children, or those who experience dysfunctional familial structures or routines. Counselling and expert-guided (self-)help groups, for example, support families in finding ways out of their ill-being. We find that the shift from supporting well-being to alleviating ill-being was not achieved by increasing services that alleviate ill-being but rather by shutting down services that support well-being. The observed shift was not yet reversed in 2021, after one year in pandemic, even though suppliers and families were already experienced with online meetings and online events, and necessary technical infrastructure had by and large been available. The well-being of families of the respective cohort and also of future generations could suffer from this shift.

ABSTRACT. Globally, the Internet has become an integral part of many people’s lives, especially young people, who are the main Internet users. In Hong Kong, which is a technologically developed region, 99.8% of children and adolescents regularly access the Internet. While frequent Internet access creates alternative ways of accessing information, the downside of this easy access is online misbehavior, such as cyberbullying, that is a relatively newer form of bullying that threatens the social and behavioural development of children. Although the negative outcomes of cyberbullying have been well documented, there is a lack of research on how cyberbullying develops and of its underlying developmental mechanisms, particularly among children in primary schools. Despite a positive association between cyber-victimization and cyberbullying has been uncovered recently, its underlying mediating mechanisms are still unclear. While individual values, such as moral disengagement (MD) and normative beliefs about aggression (NOBAG), were found to predict cyberbullying, their mediating role in the cyber-victimization and cyberbullying link is largely unexplored.

To address these research gaps, we conducted a cross-sectional study among 1,252 Grade Four students (56.8% males; mean age = 9.38) from 16 primary schools in Hong Kong, China. Using a structural equation model, we found that both MD and NOBAG served as the mediators in the association between cyber-victimization and cyberbullying. Cyber-victimization was strongly related to MD and NOBAG, which further increased cyberbullying involvement. We also found that while there were no gender differences in the mediating effects of MD and NOBAG in the association between cyber-victimization and cyberbullying, high levels of MD and NOBAG were more strongly related to cyberbullying in females than males.

The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of cyberbullying development in children and it also assessed the cross-cultural generalizability of existing Western theories and research findings. Moreover, the findings could direct both future research and intervention programs aimed at protecting children in the cyber world by enhancing the education of moral values and normative beliefs about aggression to reduce the likelihood of cyberbullying.

ABSTRACT. Adolescents with economic disadvantage experience more developmental challenges than their counterparts without economic adversity. This study aimed to investigate the mechanisms underlying the impact of peer victimization on depression among Chinese adolescents in poor communities in Southwestern China. Besides, we hypothesized that social withdrawal behavior would mediate the linkage between peer victimization and depression, and parent-child relationship was hypothesized to moderate the mediation effect. A total of 3,683 adolescents from three public middle schools in poor rural areas in Southwestern China participated in the present study. Peer victimization, social withdrawal behavior, child-parent relationship and depression were assessed by the Chinese Peer Violence Scale for Children and Adolescents, Problem Behavior Questionnaire, Parent-Child Subsystem Quality Scale, and Centre for Epidemiological Research Depression Scale, respectively. Results showed significant positive relationships between peer aggression and rural adolescents' depression as well as social withdrawal behavior. Social withdrawal was found to partially mediate the linkage between peer aggression and depression among rural adolescents. In addition, mother-child relationship, but not father-child relationship, moderated the path from social withdrawal behavior and depression, which suggests the possible buffer effect of the mother-child relationship in protecting adolescents from the risk of depression. These findings contribute to the existing theories on the impact of peer victimization and depression with particular reference to the poor rural Chinese community. Practically, strategies to reduce peer victimization and social withdrawal and to promote mother-child relationship would help to reduce depression in adolescents.

ABSTRACT. Along with a myriad of challenges caused by the onset of emergency remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, there seems to have been a drastic surge in academic dishonesty across most universities in South Africa. Issues such as educational inequalities in South Africa and the massification of higher education appear to have contributed to the current crisis. University students’ mental health and well-being have been a global public health issue of increasing concern in recent years, with a growing body of empirical evidence suggesting university students are a ‘very high-risk population’ for mental disorders and psychological distress. Pre-existing mental health challenges among university students have consequently been compounded by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Although existing research has made preliminary connections between academic dishonesty and well-being, the field is under-researched, with an evident gap in the South African context. A sample of 439 students registered in the education faculty at a large urban university in South Africa participated in a mixed-method study. Students completed an online questionnaire that consisted of the Flourishing Scale and an Academic Integrity questionnaire. A smaller sample of 29 students participated in a Photovoice study. The research required them to capture three photos or images of their experiences of well-being and academic dishonesty. The findings showed that students related academic dishonesty to a variety of factors, such as mental health concerns and disillusionment with higher education. Their well-being was associated with a sense of connection with themselves, their peers, the campus space, and the cultivation of resilience.

ABSTRACT. The long running debate over whether ill-being and well-being are two ends of the same continuum has been largely replaced by a recognition of their independent but related roles. The resulting dual-factor model has successfully challenged the ‘medical model’ in which mental health is defined simply as the absence of disease. Despite this advance most empirical studies of well-being continue to rely on a single net measure. Replacing the single index of mental health by a dual recognition of both well-being and ill-being not only contributes theoretically and empirically but also opens up a wider range of intervention options. Using a recent survey of more than 1500 first year undergraduate students entering a New Zealand university in 2019 we document the inverse correlation between student scores on the WHO-5 measure of well-being and the PHQ-9 measure of psychological distress. The correlation is not strong however and the dispersion off the diagonal reveals many students who simultaneously exhibit high well-being and high ill-being in addition to those reporting low scores on both instruments. In order to capture such complexity we cluster the continuous well-being and ill-being scores in a finite-mixture model resulting in a six cluster categorisation of mental health. Our baseline survey shows how the probability of belonging to clusters of students with high psychological distress and low well-being rises with poorer physical health and reduced financial capacity. The panel of 364 students re-interviewed six months after enrolment shows that the level of ill-being falls and well-being rises as the students’ self-assessed health improves and they gain greater control over their financial commitments.

ABSTRACT. Positive education aims to develop in student’s skills and competencies to improve their well-being. In adverse times such as a pandemic, it is important to reinforce this mission. Models such as PERMA and SEARCH suggest the use of character strengths intervention paths for student's well-being. This study aims to inquire into the relationship between the use of character strengths and life satisfaction in the students of the Tecmilenio University. The study sampled 137 high school and college students who took the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) and the Character Strengths Rating Form (CSRF). The results show, through a t-test for independent samples, that students who use their strengths report higher levels of life satisfaction. A linear regression model found that the use of character strengths significantly predicts life satisfaction, specifically the strengths of curiosity, love, social intelligence, and self-regulation. The results confirm that character strengths can be an effective pathway to life satisfaction.

ABSTRACT. It is well known nowadays: if we want to tell how well countries are doing and how well off people are, we need to go beyond GDP and take a broader scope than a pure economic one. A broader scope on development is now at the heart of political and policy-making discussion in the Netherlands. Again. As for the same reason, in 1973 the Netherlands Institute for Social Research was established. Intended as the ‘social counterpart’ for the economic views of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), we had quality of life at the center of our research. Both institutes advise policymakers and government about all aspects of policy. This is also done in the light of budget decisions. In 1973 we used mainly by so-called objective indicators of quality of life. Later they were complemented with subjective ones. Recently we have quality of society as our main focus. In the presentation I’ll discuss the relationship between quality of life and quality of society. In short, the latter comprises not only quality of life, but also distribution-issues, social cohesion, sustainability and effective and legitimate policies. I’ll also discuss why the quality of society is also a good approach to (the social part of) wellbeing and sustainable development.

ABSTRACT. Traditionally, the Gross Domestic Product has been considered the key indicator of societal progress and wellbeing. Due to the limitations of the standard statistics, governments started to use measures of psychological wellbeing (e.g., happiness, life satisfaction) to evaluate citizens’ welfare. More recently, scholars across the social sciences suggested that alternative approaches to measuring wellbeing should be taken into account. To that end, this perspective argues that governments should measure physical pain when assessing societal wellbeing. This article analyses physical pain as a socioeconomic, psychosocial, and behavioural phenomenon and discusses why pain should be used to complement the existing measures of societal wellbeing. This proposal aims to move the science of wellbeing forward and improve the design and evaluation of public policies for wellbeing.

ABSTRACT. We propose a measure of well-being efficiency to assess countries’ ability to transform inputs into subjective well-being (Cantril ladder). We use the six inputs (real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom of choice, absence of corruption, and generosity) identified in the World Happiness Reports and apply Data Envelopment Analysis to a sample of 126 countries. Efficiency scores reveal that high ranking subjective well-being countries, such as the Nordics, are not strictly the most efficient ones. Also, the scores are uncorrelated with economic efficiency. This means that the implicit assumption that economic efficiency promotes well-being is not supported. Well-being efficiency can be improved by changing the amount (scale) or composition of inputs and their use (technical efficiency). For instance countries with lower unemployment, and greater healthy life expectancy and optimism are more efficient.

ABSTRACT. Social science tends to treat subjective well-being and happiness synonymously. We start from the assumption that subjective well-being is more than being happy to ask the fundamental question: what is the ideal level of happiness? From a cross-cultural perspective, we propose that the idealization of attaining maximum levels of happiness may be especially characteristic of WEIRD societies, but less so for others. Searching for an explanation for why “happiness maximization” might have emerged in these societies, we turn to studies linking cultures to their eco-environmental habitat. We discuss the premise that WEIRD cultures emerged in an exceptionally benign ecological habitat, i.e., compared to other regions, they faced relatively light existential pressures. We review the influence of the Gulfstream on the North-Western European climate as a source of these comparatively benign geographical conditions. We propose that the ecological conditions in which WEIRD societies emerged afforded them a basis to endorse happiness as a value and to idealise attaining its maximum level. To evaluate our hypothesis, we re-analyse data from two large-scale studies on ideal levels of personal life satisfaction—the most common operationalization of happiness in psychology— involving respondents from 61 countries. We conclude that societies whose members seek to maximize happiness is a WEIRD characteristic that can prove problematic if adopted at the ideological and policy level and generalized across societies.

ABSTRACT. In the psychology of happiness there is a widely accepted hypothesis that life-satisfaction oscillates around a set-point given by nurture and nature. This assumption implicitly supposes a homeostatic mechanism, which leads to resilience against unhappiness. Thus, the present paper aims at the exploration and quantitative description of the collective resilience at the national level, which may be challenged by economic crises, natural disasters, military conflicts, pandemics, etc. In particular, we are interested in which countries the postulated resilience really exists, in order to compare its homeostasis in terms of the time needed to restore the original set-point and to analyse whether there are limits of unhappiness below which the initial set-point is not restored anymore.

In order to tackle these questions, the author analyses country-specific time-series of the World Database of Happiness, founded by the Dutch scholar Ruut Veenhoven. By means of polynomial regression, the temporal change of happiness is explained by linear and squared differences between the current national level of happiness and its long-term mean-value. The interpretation of the statistical results depends on the signs and the significances of the estimated polynomial regression coefficients of the analysed countries.

If none of the extracted regression coefficients is significant, there is no homeostasis and consequently no resilience. If only the linear term is significant and negative, there is unlimited resilience: any deviance of happiness from the initial set-point leads to a correcting change of happiness. The more negative the linear regression coefficient, the faster and more efficient is this homeostatic process. If the quadratic regression coefficient is negative and significant, formal reasoning shows that there is only limited resilience: should happiness temporarily sink below an empirically explored limit, it will not return anymore to the initial set-point and the original homeostasis is irreversibly destroyed.

ABSTRACT. In this paper we examine under what conditions an increase in life satisfaction can be expected considering comparison and adaptation effects. By pulling together insights from psychology, economics and philosophy, we develop a rich conceptual framework that clarifies the relationship between key variables and highlights crucial differences between the various relative effects. Empirical research has produced abundant evidence for the existence of self-defeating relative effects. Events that increase life satisfaction when seen in isolation may have an equally large negative effect on the life satisfaction of others or on one’s future life satisfaction. At the same time, there is sufficient evidence for certain life events to have lasting positive impacts on life satisfaction to discard the radical view that any improvement in a person’s or a society’s life satisfaction will always be self-defeating. As a result of a cross-disciplinary literature review, we conclude that relative effects can be analyzed best when life satisfaction is seen as the extent to which a person’s capabilities (as defined by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen) overlap with her aspirations. In this perspective, relative effects can have a negative impact on life satisfaction either because aspirations go up or because the capabilities set shrinks (or because both happen at the same time). By decomposing the main relative effects described in the literature—in particular social comparison, demonstration effects, positional competition, and hedonic adaptation—our framework can clarify the key properties of and differences between these effects. In particular, this perspective suggests clear criteria for distinguishing “comparison”-effects (those which influence a person’s aspirations) from “opportunity”-effects (those which influence a person’s capabilities set). The results can be used to identify interventions that are not self-defeating. Such interventions would raise people’s life satisfaction without backfiring on themselves and without reducing other people’s (or other societies’ or generations’) life satisfaction. The central role of capabilities in our framework offers the benefit of building a direct conceptual bridge from life satisfaction to objective well-being. While objective well-being and the related ethical considerations will not be the focus of our paper, our framework suggests some straightforward ethical implications. Specifically, it makes transparent the reasons for which life satisfaction is not a reliable proxy for objective well-being. By synthesizing the findings from various disciplines we gain new insights that may turn out to be productive concepts for further research on the relativity of life satisfaction and for interdisciplinary dialogue.

ABSTRACT. Edwin Locke’s (1969, 1976, 1984) range-of-affect (RoA) hypothesis played a critical role in the literature on job satisfaction. Drawing on the parallel between job facets (e.g., freedom and promotion opportunities) to job and life domains (e.g., health and family) to life, the RoA hypothesis has also been applied to the subjective well-being (SWB) literature. The application of the RoA hypothesis to the SWB literature has focused on the topic of domain importance weighting which refers to the use of weighting of domain importance in aggregating domain-specific satisfaction to obtain overall satisfaction or SWB. The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability of the RoA hypothesis to the SWB literature, particularly concerning the topic of domain importance weighting. Based on the analysis of two survey data sets, we found that not all empirical evidence supporting the RoA hypothesis from the job satisfaction literature could be replicated in the context of SWB. We also pointed out that the empirical evidence presented to oppose domain importance weighting in the SWB context was based on an approach that deviated from the conventional approach of the null hypothesis significance test. The applicability of the RoA hypothesis from the job satisfaction context to the SWB context should not be assumed.

ABSTRACT. Ratings of Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) are often found contaminated by response bias of different kinds, which complicates their interpretation and comparability across cultures and situations. For example, measures of wellbeing remain constant over time, despite objective improvements of living standard, health, longevity etc. Explanations for this "Easterlin's paradox" include peer-relativity and relativity to co-evolving expectations. Also, significant differences in measured SWB across cultures may not be real, but be due to different cultural traits or norms affecting scale usage, which can be referred to as cultural biases. Similarly, on the individual level the "disability paradox" denotes the insensitivity of conventional measures of SWB to major objective impairments, resulting in SWB in severely disabled persons not differing from healthy controls. The apparent perfect toleration of severe impairments is explained by changes in their frame of reference. As with Easterlin's paradox, it seems that significant improvements or remedial actions are irrelevant for SWB and (conventional) measures thereof do not inform policy makers of the impact of their actions and cannot validate remedial action.

Bernheim’s ACSA (Anamnestic Comparative Self-Assessment) is basically a single item self-anchoring scale of SWB that uses the respondent’s personal Worst (=-5) and Best (=+5) periods in their life experience as concretely lived personal, meaningful anchors of the SWB scale. Several findings in sociological and clinical settings show that ACSA scores are not (or less) affected by the above-mentioned relativity biases.

This presentation reports on 2 experimental scenario studies and different surveys where ACSA is compared with other, conventional measures of SWB. The results consistently indicate that ACSA is 1) more sensitive to objective changes, and 2) less affected by cultural bias. Relativity biases are reduced because ACSA, contrary to conventional scales, uses self-anchoring. According to studies in the different cultures of South-Africa, despite significantly different mean scores, anchor themes are similar in all populations. This supports the hypothesis that ACSA is universal and would make SWB commensurable worldwide. Collaboration in further studies with other ISQOL members will be welcomed.

Therefore, Bernheim’s ACSA deserves more attention and should be considered for wide usage in SWB research and for policymakers.

OTHER ISQOLS MEMBERS WILL BE WELCOMED TO COLLABORATE

ABSTRACT. Using a quasi-experimental research design and drawing on several small-area indicators, we examine the role of neighbourhood and outdoor dwelling characteristics in predicting the impact of the pandemic’s first wave on mental health in Great Britain. We find that proximity to blue spaces, such as rivers, lakes or beaches, was associated with lower mental distress during the first lockdown period. Additionally, outdoor dwelling characteristics such as garden space or the presence of a rooftop, terrace or balcony were also associated with less mental distress. Finally, our findings suggest that there were substantive geographic inequalities in impact with individuals living in areas with higher income and health deprivation experiencing on average much higher levels of mental distress. Overall, our findings demonstrate that the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic led to a marked increase in population-level mental distress, but crucially these impacts varied sharply across different housing and neighbourhood types.

ABSTRACT. Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously affected all parts of the world. The epidemic crisis exists in unknown ways, which has brought great risks and uncertainties to personnel in all industries. Among them, social workers engaged in the delivery of social welfare services. They also belong to the frontline staff of epidemic prevention as medical staff, but their work pressure has received relatively little attention. This research is to explore the causal relationship between social workers' fear, uncertain cognition, and case infection under the attack of COVID-19, which affect work pressure. The dimensions of personal resilience, peer and supervisor support, family support, and effective communication in crisis situations are considered as possible ways to reduce pressure and maintain well-being in life. This study used the questionnaire survey method to conduct a survey of social workers and social welfare administrators across Taiwan through the Internet. From September 1, 2022 to November 20, 2022, 142 valid samples were obtained.After statistical analysis, the following conclusions were drawn: (1) fear of COVID-19 will positively affect social workers’ work pressure; (2) colleagues and supervisor support will negatively affect social workers’ work pressure; (3) effective communication will negatively affect social workers’ work pressure. (4) The resilience and family support of social workers will positively affect the well-being of life.

ABSTRACT. After COVID 19, experiences at home have changed a lot compared to the lives during the pandemic. We compared between people's lives during the pandemic and after the pandemic, in six areas of their lives. According to desk research, we found six areas that changed most in everyday lives after the pandemic. These areas were home training, home education, remote work, home entertainment, home social, and household chores.

We visited 6 homes in South Korea, and 12 homes in UK/US and conducted the depth interview. Characteristics of household were varied based on life stage of people at home. For example, 1 person household, 2-person households, 5-person household with pets, senior household, etc. were included in six homes. The interview question was consisted of overall lifestyle, residential space, home activity, home appliances, and future expectations for home activity. The results of home-visit study in South Korea are summarized as below. The results of US and UK are still in progress.

Table - Changes in Home Experiences in South Korea (see attached file)

As we are working for consumer electronics company, we are planning to develop key scenarios with existing and new home appliances to increase quality of life of home experiences after COVID 19.

ABSTRACT. Salutogenic effects of volunteer activities and informal helping have been well recognized. Prior research on health effects for middle-aged and older adults of altruistic behaviors, including informal helping others and volunteer activities, showed their favorable association with longevity and greater well-being. Regarding physical health, there is evidence on associations between volunteering and reduced risk of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and physical functioning limitations. As for mental health, associations with lower risks of loneliness, cognitive impairment, and depressive symptoms have been reported. Although prior studies have provided robust evidence on the importance of voluntary activities and altruistic behaviors for the health of middle-aged and older adults, these studies were conducted in the pre-covid pandemic era. Since the COVID-19 pandemic has unprecedentedly changed people’s lives, it is worth reexamining the seemingly well-known effects of helping and volunteering.

We examined prospective associations between helping others living outside one’s home and six emotional well-being outcomes one year later. These altruistic activities were assessed during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and concerned assistance with the provision of necessities, as well as other additional volunteer activities.

Data from 42,005 middle-aged and older adults were used. The targeted individuals participated in the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and two SHARE Corona Surveys. Prospective associations were examined using generalized estimating equations. Secondary analyses under the complete case scenario, after excluding respondents with depression, using limited sets of covariates, examining gender effects of the assessed associations and the sensitivity of the associations to unmeasured confounding provided evidence for the robustness of results.

Helping others outside one’s home in the first wave of COVID-19 was associated with a subsequent increased risk of depression and anxiety. It was also associated with an increased risk of an uplifting, hope, and happiness-inducing experience. Engagement in volunteer activities conducted in addition to helping was found to be prospectively associated with an increased risk of an uplifting experience, but not with depression and anxiety. When examined altogether, helping and volunteering were associated with an increased risk of depression and an increased risk of an uplifting, hope, and happiness-inspiring experience but not with anxiety. These associations were independent of whether the respondents were engaged in altruistic activities before the COVID-19 pandemic, felt lonely, depressed, and anxious at that time. They were also independent of demographic and socio-economic characteristics, personality traits, prior quality of life, and health history. Sensitivity and robustness analyses provided additional evidence for the robustness of these associations.

Helping and volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic can positively contribute to subsequent well-being. However, the negative impact on mental health can also occur. Prior suggestions that altruistic behaviors may be considered a health and well-being resource that enables middle-aged and older adults in Europe to maintain health and good quality of life may need a reconsideration.

ABSTRACT. In Norway, about half of all care is provided informally by family. Additional pressure for family-based care may increase in the future due to the aging of the population. Prior research has documented that such care provision has adverse effects on subjective well-being, loneliness, and psychological distress. However, qualitative interviews indicate that informal carers simultaneously experience feelings of appreciation, increased affinity with the care recipient, growth, and satisfaction in their role as caregiver. These rewards can co-exist with high levels of stress. To capture the complexity of the psychological effects we explore the longitudinal impacts of caregiving on different hedonic and eudaimonic aspects of psychological well-being. We use up to four waves of data from the Covid-19 module of the Norwegian Counties Public Health Survey (N ~ 5,000, age 18+). We separate outcomes into cognitive well-being (life satisfaction), affective well-being (happiness, positive and negative affect, loneliness), and eudaimonic well-being (engagement, meaning, promoting well-being of others). Preliminary data supports that caregiving relates to lower subjective well-being, but slightly higher eudaimonic well-being. Future analysis will indicate whether impacts differ by sex, age, socioeconomic status, living situation, and care-related factors (resident vs. non-resident caregiving, frequency of care). The results reviewed and presented indicate that caregiving has less detrimental effects in the Nordic countries than in other countries, highlighting the role of social policies and care systems in shaping the impact caregiving on well-being.

ABSTRACT. Background Relatives, such as parents and siblings play a central role in the lives of people with intellectual disabilities. Although providing care for a family member is associated with positive effects, previous research has shown that it can be demanding as well and is also associated with unfavorable effects on relatives’ quality of life. Transitions in the lives of relatives and their family members can pose further risks to their quality of life. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and preventative measures were a major source of transition. During this time, relatives were assigned more caring responsibilities while possibilities for social and professional support diminished. Although cross-sectional studies were conducted into the impact of this transition on mental health outcomes, longitudinal knowledge on the impact on relatives’ quality of life and factors contributing to this impact is sparse. Therefore, we investigated relatives' quality of life and risk and buffering factors at four time points before and during the pandemic.

Methods Surveys were administered to relatives in the Netherlands in the second half of 2019, June 2020, October 2020, and May 2021. Quality of life was measured in all surveys using the WHOQOL-BREF. Associations between quality of life and care burden, care competence, and social support, as well as changes over time were analyzed using (logistic) regressions. Additionally, relations between quality of life and five behavioral coping strategies were analyzed using regression analyses. Further analyses on the effectiveness of coping strategies for different subgroups of relatives will be performed.

Results Care burden was negatively associated with quality of life and increased during the first year of the pandemic. Care competence was positively associated with quality of life and was lower in 2020 than in 2019. However, these changes did not result in significant differences in quality of life between 2019 and 2020. Social support was positively associated with quality of life. Seeking distraction and actively approaching were the coping strategies relatives used most often in 2021. These strategies were positively related to their quality of life. Women were more inclined to seek social support to cope with the pandemic than men. Interestingly, this strategy was negatively correlated with quality of life.

Conclusion Two factors that were highly predictive of relatives’ quality of life changed during the pandemic: experienced care burden increased and perceived care competence decreased. This study therefore emphasizes that the pandemic posed a non-negligible risk to their well-being and it is essential to support relatives during these types of transition. The findings of this study can be used to guide this support, as they suggest that there should be a focus on reducing care burden and increasing perceived competence and social support. Providing access to (alternative forms of) respite care could reduce experienced care burden. Information on caregiving during transitions could increase relatives' perceived competence. Since coping and quality of life are correlated, relatives could benefit from psychological help. Supporting relatives during transitions is important for both their own mental health and their caregiving role.

ABSTRACT. The idea of well-being, although purely psychological, encompasses several dimensions like financial, health, professional and personal. A state of well-being has a positive influence on various aspects of an individual’s activities, interests, and life events – happiness, philanthropy, volunteerism, social interactions. This study looks at the financial well-being and assesses its effect on the inherent intention of an individual to donate to charity. Financial well-being (FWB) is conceptualised through (i) the stress an individual perceives about the present financial situation – current money management stress, and (ii) the perception about the finances looking ahead in time – expected future financial security. The study does not only consider the direct relationship between financial well-being and the intention to donate (ITD) but also incorporates hedonism and eudaimonism as constructs mediating the relationship. Hedonism captures pleasure or happiness whereas eudaimonism is about actualisation of human potential. Hedonism is manifested through two dimensions with divergent orientations viz. experience of pleasure (EP) and avoidance of negative experience (ANE). Personality traits have also been found to be closely associated with contentment and charity. In our study, neuroticism and extraversion are considered to have a moderating role. The research work was operationalised through a survey comprising of 46 Likert scale-based items. Responses (n = 1081) were sought from Indian citizens along various demographic parameters like age, gender, income, educational accomplishments, and profession. The questionnaire captured opinions about financial well-being, hedonism, eudaimonism, extraversion, neuroticism, and intention to donate. The data was subjected to partial least square - structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) which was carried out in SmartPLS 4. The results confirmed that both current money management stress and future financial security influence intention to donate, both, directly, as well as via hedonism and eudaimonism as mediators stressing the importance of all four constructs in intention to donate. Further, it is important to note that the relationship between current money management stress and eudaimonism was not significant initially, however, when neuroticism was brought in as the moderator it turned significant and positive suggesting that that current money management stress influences eudaimonic well-being only with neuroticism as moderator. In addition, extraversion was found to be the chief moderating construct in the relationship between hedonism and ITD. Extraversion makes the originally non-significant relationship between EP and ITD into a significant one indicating that extraverted people tend to experience pleasure/happiness more and hence may be inclined to donate. On the other hand, ANE had a significant positive relationship with ITD, however, with extraversion as moderator the relationship became significant negative suggesting experience of negative emotions may make extraverted individuals to donate less. This study has important implications for consumer behaviour and financial well-being researchers as it brings in personality traits to understand the interplay between FWB, hedonism/eudaimonism and ITD. It throws crucial light on to how the innate characteristics of individuals can affect their outlook towards charity. Philanthropy institutions can design their marketing communications keeping this aspect in mind to improve their strike rate while seeking substantial contributions from donors.

ABSTRACT. Community level initiatives are important in the transition to sustainability. Ecovillages are often presented as examples of such initiatives that aim to combine high quality, communal life with low environmental impact. The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) defines an ecovillage as ‘a rural or urban community that is consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes in all four dimensions of sustainability (social, culture, ecology and economy) to regenerate their social and natural environments’ (Global Ecovillage Network n.d.). Despite the positive characteristics ascribed to ecovillages, they have been criticized for disregarding environmental and social justice (Mason 2014), for lacking a clear political stance (Fotopoulos 2000), and for being too expensive and therefore exclusionary (Cunningham 2014; Temesgen 2020). Still, ecovillages are one of the fastest growing local-level initiatives (Jones 2011), and there are studies that show the positive impact some ecovillages have on spreading sustainability practices among local municipalities (Boyer 2015).

This paper focuses on a Norwegian ecovillage, its transformation to a larger and more modern form (by engaging architects and developers) and the impact this transformation has had on the wellbeing of its inhabitants. This transformation has been hailed as a success through the lens of transition studies but our findings show that it has had negative consequences for the wellbeing of the inhabitants. By drawing on theories from the transition and wellbeing fields, the present paper aims to contribute theoretical insights to both fields and to the study of grassroots innovations and their success/failure.

ABSTRACT. The study uses qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate how environment affects people’s happiness in a greenspace community at the border of Bangkok. By working with the community on water problems and management since 2017, participated community members have become more engaged in solving problems to preserve their greenspace. In addition, the study investigated factors affecting happiness by collecting data (firstly in 2018-2019) for almost 500 samples which employed self-rating in life satisfaction, environmental quality and management, time balance, inner happiness indicators, health, as well as perception in relative income, family net income, and actual income levels. Empirical results show that well-environmental management and environmental quality, apart from community participation and inner happiness indicators, significantly happiness of people in the community. In addition, environment quality significantly affects happiness of all groups in the community regardless of income levels, occupations, and age groups. In particular, their happiness level from preserving the local greenspace is high. The results also confirm significant roles of inner happiness (i.e., feeling enough or lower wants, giving/ helping others, and the ability to manage suffering), health, time balance, family and community relationship as well as relative income and family net income to overall happiness. From the second survey in 2023, the estimation also confirms the significance of environment and inner happiness in addition to community participation, family net income, health and time balance.

ABSTRACT. Background and Purpose: Gentrification—the process in which residential and built environments change to meet newer, comparatively affluent residents’ tastes—is theoretically linked to wellbeing through multiple mechanisms. First, it can be linked to fractured social networks due to outmigration. Second, long term residents can experience a loss of sense of community as local businesses and organizations shift to meet the desires of newcomers and the environment becomes less familiar. Third, it is tied to housing stock and pricing and as such is tied to wealth accumulation though homeownership (can be positive or negative). Fourth, newcomers may spur organizational and built resources that promote wellbeing. At the community level, gentrification has impacts on components of community wellbeing as described by the Santa Monica Wellbeing Index and similar indices.

Most research on gentrification is focused on urban neighborhoods. More work is needed to better understand these processes in rural communities as amenity-rich rural communities have been, and are increasingly, experiencing an influx of comparatively affluent residents, whether as primary residents or second homeowners. Rural gentrification often intersects with tourism gentrification in these locales. This research focuses on Leadville, CO, a small city in Colorado that is experiencing rural gentrification. Leadville is located in a rural county with an economy based on tourism and natural resource extraction.

Research Questions: A. How is the wellbeing of residents in very small cities shaped by gentrification? B. How is community wellbeing shaped by gentrification?

Methods: This project uses a mixed-methods design. In-depth qualitative interviews, obtained through a convenience sample that includes snowball sampling, were conducted in person and via zoom with long term and newer residents as well as local leaders. Data are analyzed using a thematic approach. These data are contextualized with data from the from the American Community Survey and US decennial census and data gathered from observations from public meetings and city events.

Preliminary Results: Preliminary results from interview data indicate that many, but not all, residents are satisfied with their lives and find happiness living in Leadville. Their positive perceptions are strongly tied to the reasons most respondents chose Leadville as their home – largely due to its natural beauty and access to outdoor recreation amenities. Respondents have some level of dissatisfaction with city services and amenities, which are not designed for heavy tourism. Results suggest changes in the built and social environment that accompany gentrification should be viewed in a nuanced way. That is, they may both positively and negatively impact residents and these perceptions and experiences are highly variable at the individual level.

Discussion: Discussion will focus on the ways that community and individual wellbeing can be examined and conceptualized in the context of this case study in rural gentrification. The implications and overlap of tourist gentrification will also be discussed.

ABSTRACT. Europe’s rural areas are threatened by a ‘vicious cycle’ of depopulation and under-development: as the population decreases, the quality of life of those left behind declines, fueling more rural out-migration. Place attachment, that is, the bond forged between people and localities, holds great potential in deconstructing this ‘vicious cycle.’ Yet, its role in rural residents’ (im)mobility decisions and the related consequences of such decisions on their well-being remain under-researched.

This contribution aims to fill this gap using a multi-sited ethnographic research approach. It provides a comparative, in-depth analysis of the interlinkages between place attachment, rural (im)mobility, and well-being in depopulated regions of Southeast Europe.

Our preliminary findings highlight sociocultural factors as important determinants of place attachment. Age, gender, education, economic situation, home and business investments, as well as family and community ties, play a significant role in the development and maintenance of links to rural localities. Furthermore, the strength of such links differs across regions. In traditional settings, for example, place attachment is reinforced or weakened through behavioral and gendered norms, which prevent women from leaving and encourage men to migrate. Consequently, the nature of the attachment to a place has adverse consequences for people’s well-being. Those forced to stay because of certain traditions and norms experience lower levels of well-being than those who choose to stay in rural areas because of certain attributes that make them particularly attractive to people. From a policy standpoint, identifying factors that foster positive attachment to localities is pivotal in preventing depopulation and improving rural well-being.

ABSTRACT. This paper provides global evidence on the relationship between behavioural preferences and subjective wellbeing. It uses the Global Preferences Survey and the Gallup World Poll covering a globally representative population from 76 countries in 2012. Results indicate strong correlations between different measures of subjective wellbeing (SWB) and the set of preferences consisting of patience, risk taking, positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, altruism and trust. The correlations tend to be positive and most correlations also show a curvilinear shape. This provides the first global empirical evidence on how SWB and behavioural preferences relate.

ABSTRACT. The massive increase in mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic for people in their midlife or older provides a natural experiment to examine the effect of increased mortality on subjective well-being. Using subjective well-being data drawn from 2013 and 2021 American Time Use Survey Well-Being Modules, this paper examines how various measures of subjective well-being in the US have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic due to increased mortality. The measures of subjective well-being include happiness, pain, sadness, stress, tiredness, meaningfulness, and the Cantril ladder. The regression results for two age groups, 15 to 39-year-olds and 40 to 85-year-olds, indicate that although older people’s affective measures of subjective well-being, meaningfulness and health suffered as a result of COVID-19, they felt better about their lives because they survived.

ABSTRACT. Beyond the material consequences, climate change can also produce non-material effects, which politicians have mainly overlooked, such as emotional concerns and preference shifts among citizens. One of the non-material effects that has recently been popularized in the media and academia is eco-anxiety, which seems to particularly affect young people in developed countries and refers to the anxiety people face from constantly being surrounded by the threatening problems associated with climate change. This article investigates how eco-anxiety is related with subjective well-being among youth using data from Luxembourg. It also analyses how this relationship is moderated by proximity to extreme weather events. Luxembourg is a relevant setting because it is the country with the highest GDP per capita in the world and one of the happiest, and like other European countries, it experienced a severe flooding in the summer of 2021. With a sample of 3.500 observations, our results show that while there is a strong relationship between eco-anxiety and short-term happiness beyond individual characteristics, this relationship appears to be non-existent when we use an evaluative measure of subjective well-being (life satisfaction). Furthermore, our results indicate that the association between eco-anxiety and happiness is not sensitive to the flooding in their country, unless individuals are directly exposed to it. The article stipulates several potential explanations for these results and presents avenues for future research. Overall, this evidence can also help to understand why citizens are less willing to take action against climate change in the short-term.

ABSTRACT. Financial capabilities of individuals measured at the country level stem from economic factors, but the role of cultural factors has not been assessed yet. Differences in national cultures are hypothesized to correlate with financial capability of individuals among countries. This study attempts to answer an important question: What is the relationship between culture and financial capability at the country level? The data for this study originate from four diverse sources provided by the World Bank, United Nations, and Hofstede Insights. The final dataset includes data from 85 countries. As a measure of financial capability, we use an aggregate index combining financial behavior (account ownership) and financial knowledge. Culture is measured using six dimensions of national cultures: Power Distance, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism, Long Term Orientation, and Indulgence. The results show that certain dimensions of culture are strongly correlated with financial capabilities at country levels even after controlling for the level of development. Positive relationships between financial capability and three cultural factors, Individualism, Long-term orientation, and Indulgence, were noted. In addition, Uncertainty Avoidance and Masculinity were negatively associated with financial capabilities. The observed relationships were non-linear. Especially Individualism and Long-term Orientation were positive correlates of financial capability to a certain point and neither very high Individualism or above average Long-term Orientation were not indicative of further increases in financial capability.

ABSTRACT. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development establishes as the objective 3.8 to achieve universal health coverage, especially protecting households against financial risks and promoting quality and access to health services. In Peru, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led public health policies to focus on combating the pandemic, removing attention from chronic diseases (e.g., hypertension, diabetes, or cancer, among others). As a result, households had to face higher out-of-pocket health expenses, not only when assuming direct expenses for the prevention or contagion of COVID-19, but also the ones related to chronic diseases. When out-of-pocket health expenses exceed a certain threshold for household spending, they are considered catastrophic, because they put financial security and the satisfaction of basic household needs at risk.

Additionally, the health spending faced by households in the context of the COVIC-19 pandemic may become an impoverishing health expenditure. In this vein, the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) has highlighted that the new health spending is not covered by the Public Sector considerably impoverished Latin-American households. Whereas the non-poor families faced these out-of-pocket expenses with their savings or even selling their assets, the poor households lost abruptly the heritage of their entire lives. Therefore, the catastrophic health expenses derived from the pandemic can lead households to fall below the poverty line or even worsen the situation of those already below that line.

Using the microdata of the National Household Survey of Peru for the years 2019, 2020 and 2021, first we identify the households that incur into catastrophic health expenditure; second, we analyse the incidence of this expenditure among poor and non-poor households; third, we estimate the percentage of households that have impoverished because of this expense and, finally, we study the socioeconomic correlate of the catastrophic health spending by estimating probit models.

The results show that the percentage of both poor and non-poor households that incur in catastrophic health expenditure increased during the analyzed period due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, in 2019, 2020 and 2021, respectively, 31.6%, 36.4% and 44.9% of Peruvian households spent more than 5% of their ability to pay on health expenses. Likewise, we estimate that catastrophic spending on health in 2020 increased the percentage of households in extreme poverty by 0.5 percentage points and households in poverty by 1.6 percentage points. The socioeconomic characteristics of the most vulnerable households in terms of catastrophic health expenditure are households with children, senior citizens, members with illnesses and/or disabilities, with low incomes and living in rural areas. These findings lead to rethink a reform of the Peruvian health system, seeking to protect the financial security of households in Peru.

ABSTRACT. What are the broader societal implications of inflation and unemployment? Using information on over 1.9 million individuals living in 156 countries from the Gallup World Poll from 2005 to 2021 and country-level macroeconomic data, we document that both inflation and unemployment are associated with lower probabilities of confidence in financial institutions. Furthermore, while inflation is generally unassociated with confidence in government and leadership approval, unemployment still has a strong negative association with these outcomes. While we find no gender differences in the consequences of inflation and unemployment for the probability of expressing confidence in political and financial institutions, the associations we document are stronger for the cohorts that are likely to bear a disproportionate burden from inflation and unemployment—middle-aged, lower-educated, and unmarried individuals, and for those living in rural areas. Uncertainty about the country's economic performance and one's own economic situation are the primary channels behind the effects we identify. These findings have important implications for national policymakers, Central Banks, and the public debates on inflation and unemployment.

ABSTRACT. Household’s financial satisfaction refers to the current level of satisfaction with several aspects of an individual’s or household’s financial situation, such as financial stress, investment capability, and being able to pay bills or unexpected expenses. Financial satisfaction is not only relevant for people as it enables them to achieve their economic or material goals but also allows them to have a sense of satisfaction with their lives.

According to the related literature, this kind of satisfaction is one of the most relevant domains of life. Thus, identifying its determinants could also be useful for policymaking for several reasons. First, knowing what produces satisfaction in different areas of individuals’ lives, such as financial situation, provides new tools to empirically analyze individual utility and social welfare through information on non-material aspects of people’s well-being. Second, given that the subjective approach allows measuring the effect of economic policy on human behavior and well-being, it is also relevant for the design and assessment of more precise public policies by simulating new approaches and new theorizing about economic affairs. Finally, previous evidence has shown that different subjective indicators should be used as a predictor of economic outcomes, since achieving happier societies is not only desirable per se at the individual level (e.g., better productivity, less financial insecurity, and health), but also at the macroeconomic level by promoting greater economic growth and social welfare.

Additionally, the most extended related literature has shown that relationships with family and friends and attending social and cultural events (social capital) are among the main factors that improve subjective well-being. I hypothesize that there could be sources of endogeneity in the relationship between social resources and financial satisfaction.

In this vein, this paper aims at studying the correlates of the financial satisfaction using a control function method to account for sources of endogeneity surrounding the association between social resources and financial satisfaction. This method allows us to address this problem by recognizing that financial satisfaction and social resources may be simultaneously influenced by unobserved characteristics. For that, we use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the period 1998–2014 related with the period before, during and after the Global Economic crisis.

The results of our estimates show the presence of endogeneity. Hence, it is convenient to control for this endogeneity when analyzing satisfaction, since the traditional relevance of social contacts in improving satisfaction disappears after controlling for this problem, while the relevance of having worries and trust remains. In terms of social comparisons, people are more satisfied with their financial situation when they are better than others, being no significant when they are worse in economic terms. Additionally, the presence of a second earner in the household is associated with more financial satisfaction, which could reduce the felling of financial insecurity in the household.

ABSTRACT. Although more and more people choose to live in cities, subjective well-being (SWB) is generally lower in large urban areas in the Western world. This article examines to what extent spatial differences in SWB are driven by differences in the quality and affordability of housing between the largest cities and peri-urban and rural areas. Using a Dutch panel database, linking characteristics of housing to SWB, we show that differences in housing tenure, housing and neighborhood quality and housing affordability can partly explain the spatial SWB differential in the Netherlands.

ABSTRACT. Research has shown that people in the developed world tend to be less happy in cities than in rural areas—the so-called “urban-rural happiness gradient.” The recent COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to explore how cities were impacted. Not all groups of people experienced the pandemic equally and we are particularly interested in exploring how living in a big city upended life during the pandemic, resulting in less happiness. One of the disadvantages of large cities and dense settlements is the greater spread of infectious diseases compared to rural areas. Thus, in this paper, we examine how the COVID pandemic affected happiness in the largest cities compared to rural areas by exploring the World Value Survey and the General Social Survey datasets.

ABSTRACT. You would not be forgiven by most if say that, essentially, people choose the place they truly prefer for where to live. Not everybody has such luxury. People choose the places where to live relevant portions of their lives by passing thorough a complex, frequently painful, decisional process counterbalancing costs and benefits in different domains not easily comparable. As for education and partners’ choice, deciding the location where to live is among the most significant in one’s live and with the most lasting effect, if not permanent. Surveys repetitively suggest that for around 2/3 of individuals, small towns and villages, not cities, are their preferred places where to live, as well as work places’ location being among the most influential criteria playing in the decisional process when contemplating where to reside. If this is true, it would not be a surprise to see a counterurbanisation phenomenon if remote work and teleservices would be a valuable option. This is what actually happened across many countries during our current covid-19 pandemic. However, we cannot definitely know if the main “escape” from cities influence was romantically linked with preferred rural lifestyles or merely a necessity to have bigger house where to work and remote schooling and gardens to better cope with endless lockdowns. Whatever being the reasons, an expected secondary effect of such counterurbanisation is a relative greater house prices growth in smaller settlements compared to cities. This happened too. We will shortly report some observations from the UK in which rural house prices increased twice as fast as in cities.

ABSTRACT. The city comprises a wide variety of heterogeneous territorial units (e.g. districts). In many – especially larger – cities social capital assets (like community bonds) are mirrored at the level of neighbourhoods which form the home for many socio-cultural communities or fairly homogeneous socio-economic classes. We postulate in the present study that the big city is essentially an ‘archipelago’ made up of ‘urban villages’. We analyse the appreciation of residents for their daily local neighbourhood by introducing the concept of ‘village love’ (or ‘neighbourhood love’), inspired by the recent literature on ‘city love’ (comprising ‘body’, ‘soul’ and ‘community’ constituents of urban life). Based on an extensive and detailed multi-annual database for all neighbourhoods in Rotterdam, the present paper seeks to identify the background factors shaping ‘village love’ in the city, with particular attention to the citizens’ attachment and access to a great variety of (physical and immaterial) urban amenities shaping the place-based satisfaction of residents. The theoretical framing of our research originates from an intra-city interpretation and application of Christaller’s central place theory, in which proximity to amenities plays a key role. A wide array of relevant amenities impacting on the well-being feelings (‘village love’) of residents in various neighbourhoods in the city of Rotterdam is distinguished using inter alia rich multi-annual survey data. This approach is empirically tested and verified by means of LISA statistics and advanced spatial econometric dependence models (‘urbanometrics’). The findings confirm the validity of a central place interpretation of ‘urban village love’ in the city.

ABSTRACT. The growing importance attributed to family well-being gave impetus to the development of family well-being measures, especially in Western countries. However, for Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines, research on family well-being measures is still in the early stage. This study is part of an ongoing three-phase research project. The first phase established the conceptualization of Filipino Family Well-being (FFW). The results of which are used in this second phase, where the objectives are (1) to develop a pool of items for the FFW Scale and (2) to determine their content validity. The scale items were generated based on the eight dimensions of FFW and the corresponding indicators that emanated from the first phase. The research team generated an initial pool of 146 statements, which were eventually trimmed to 75 due to item duplication and irrelevance. The scale items were spread out across the eight dimensions of FFW. There were 20 items under the dimension of resource adequacy, 9 items under comfortable lifestyle, 11 items under financial security and stability, 14 items under good family relationships, 7 items under good parenting, 4 items under good health of family members, 7 items under virtuous family life, and 3 items under family satisfaction and contentment. Six experts on the Filipino family subjected the scale items to content validity by using a content validation tool. Out of the 75 items, 68 had Content Validity Index (CVI) scores of at least .83, indicating that these items were relevant to the construct of FFW, hence valid. The preliminary FFW Scale was revised according to the content validation outcomes, resulting in a reduced scale with 70 items. A comparison with existing family well-being metrics shows that most of the dimensions in the preliminary FFW Scale have similarities with earlier metrics. However, the indicators and individual items describing these dimensions have certain distinctions that illustrate the peculiarities of how Filipinos assign meaning to family well-being. The study recommends translating the scale items to major Filipino languages and dialects and pilot-testing the scales on various types of Filipino families to ascertain their validity and reliability further.

ABSTRACT. To manage the spread of COVID-19, Singapore, like many other countries, imposed major restrictions such as working from home, mask wearing, and restrictions in gatherings. Since the first COVID case in January 2020, Singapore imposed a range of restrictions (Goh, 2022). From restrictions to impose mask-wearing and restricting social gatherings, early in 2020 to mid-2021, where restrictions were gradually lifted, with gatherings of five to eight groups allowed. As infections rose, this was again reduced to group sizes of two and by November 2021, group sizes were limited to five again. By March 2022, group sizes were expanded to ten and mask wearing outdoors became optional. With these social restrictions in place, mental health symptoms such as depression, stress, and loneliness were found to be correlated with social restrictions (Knox et al., 2022).

A total of 1,620 participants were included in this study, with an age range of 18 to 92. Quality of life and heart rate variability were examined across two time periods in Singapore, during major restrictions (November 2021 to August 2022) and after major restrictions (from November 2022 to December 2022). Quality of life was measured using the WHOQOL-BREF and scores across the four domains, physical, psychological, social relationships, and environment were significantly lower during major restrictions (DMR) in Singapore compared to after major restrictions (AMR). Further examination of the four quality of life factors found that psychological quality of life decreased the most (DMR: M = 68.65, SD = 13.38; AMR: M = 76.60, SD = 13.15) , followed by social relationships (DMR: M = 71.04, SD = 15.56; AMR: M = 77.03, SD = 14.01), physical quality of life (DMR: M = 73.64, SD = 13.27; AMR: M = 79.10, SD = 12.24), and environmental quality of life (DMR: M = 72.87, SD = 12.80; AMR: M = 74.44, SD = 12.13). Similarly, heart rate variability scores (SDNN) were significantly lower during major restrictions (M = 50.26, SD = 34.36), compared to after major restrictions (M = 52.34, SD = 22.82), indicating higher stress levels during major restrictions. The results are aligned with previous research, as stress levels increased while quality of life decreased with major restrictions and when restrictions were eased, stress levels decreased and quality of life increased.

Social restrictions have an impact on psychological well-being, and this study provides objective and subjective data to support this claim. Although social restrictions are necessary in an epidemic and saved many lives by curbing the spread of the virus, it is important to consider the psychological impact social restrictions have on people, and to promote other forms of virtual interactions or allowances for some social interaction.

ABSTRACT. Aims The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on every aspects of human life. In particular, during the first phase of the pandemic, the governments imposed many restrictions on the public. The aims of this paper is to identify if happiness and QoL changes would be linked to either social or economic factors.

Methods Longitudinal surveys were conducted before and after COVID 19 pandemic in Japan (n=1,749, mean age: 35.6 yrs). The survey items include happiness, age, gender, job status, income, health, loneliness, community involvement, trust, time use, and the frequency of contact between family members. Ordinary least squared regression and fixed effect model were applied.

Results Loneliness was a key factor. The details will be reported at the conference.

ABSTRACT. The Teach4Reach research project explores the roles of teachers and teacher educators in sustainability. Guided by the global agenda for sustainability, Agenda2030, it focuses on four of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), i.e. Good Health and Wellbeing (SDG 3), Quality education (SDG 4), Gender equity (SDG 5) and Reduced Inequalities (SDG 10). Specifically, the question is asked, ‘How can teacher education programmes be leveraged to support Agenda 2030 and the sustainable development goals?’. In the project, a mixed methods methodology is used in which data is collected through vignettes, group interviews and artefact collection. Key data points present during an SDG theme-based webinar series. Participants include teacher educators, leaders and policymakers, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students from a variety of scientific disciplines in Europe and Africa. This paper reports on the findings from the vignette data-set that emanated from the first three Teach4Reach webinars which were conducted over a period on one year. Data was analysed in accordance with the Innsbruck Vignette research method. Findings indicate i) heightened awareness of the intricate synergies between wellbeing and learning, ii) discreetly tentative experiences of engagement in online environments, and iii) contextually similar enthusiasm regarding sustainability.

ABSTRACT. Introduction: This study endeavored to focus on the adversities that adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds face, and to explore ways to assist them to overcome these adversities and to become happy productive adults. The purpose of this study was to explore the dynamic characteristics of accumulative disadvantage, the context of individual strengths and ecological assets, and the meaning of well-being. Research method: This study adopted a qualitative research method, with a purposive sampling method, and recruited 16 youth to share their experiences. In-depth face-to-face interviews were conducted to understand the resources and support in their experiences of adversity. Their age was from 20 to 25. 6 study participations were males, and 10 study participations were females. Results: The results indicated that these youths suffered from deprivation caused by deficiency of resources in their lives. These deprivations influenced their well-being and there might even occur an accumulating effect which, in turn, put them on difficult trajectories into their development as adults. The multiple experiences of adversity in adolescence influenced each other and accumulated over time. For most youths, economic security and positive youth-adult relationships contributed to the effective transition to adulthood. Economic security included stable employment, experiences in financial planning, and sense of financial security. In the experiences of employment, these youths learned the skills necessary for works, including interpersonal interaction and the skills required for the workplace. Because of adversity during adolescence, interpersonal interaction was the biggest challenge in their lives as adults. They broke through their own limitations, and learned abilities which helped their stable lives. On the other hand, having self-arranged finances increased their sense of security in lives and built their hopeful future expectations. The ecological assets depended on two elements from the study: a relationship of trust and an emotional support network for young people. Because of lack of secure attachment in their childhood and self-identity in adolescence, trust was difficult for these youth. However, they expected caring and connections with others. Social welfare service and youth employment programs played the important roles for these youths. The connections with ecological assets revealed four aspects: strong youth-adult relationships, involving in decision-making process, the opportunities from in-program activities, and emotional supports. Recommendations: The findings from this study have the potential help to advance the positive youth development research in youth with accumulative disadvantage. We recommend the service providers and policy makers to advocate for these adolescents, with a special emphasis on their ecological assets and to address accumulated adversities to their wellbeing in emerging adulthood, and build evidence-based practice connected to well-being of adolescents.

ABSTRACT. This article analyzes the Focus Group Interview (FGI) with young adults and incorporates it into the research, conducted by Statistical Research Institute (SRI) of Statistics Korea, constructing a framework for well-being of young adults in Korea in 2022. We will introduce our research: first, we would like to share our work to understand well-being of each life cycle – children and youth, young adults, and older people in Korea – along with the well-being framework of the entire population. Furthermore, the current progress of our research on the framework for well-being of young adults in Korea will be reviewed in this paper. Then, we will conduct a comprehensive analysis of the outcomes and implications of FGI with young adults. We would also like to propose the plan of our subsequent research on the framework and system of indicators of well-being of young adults in Korea. This research is expected to contribute to comprehension of the current situation of Korean young adults in the perspective of well-being and to policymaking to improve the well-being of young adults. We also expect it to provide a relevant suggestion for measurement of well-being of young adults.

ABSTRACT. Background: Research concentrating on the quality of life of children and adolescents is rapidly growing. Despite considerable conceptual and methodological advances in both the general and specific youth populations, quality of life in the field of child and youth welfare and protection (CYWP) remains a relatively uncharted territory. The limited research that exists in this area has mainly relied on generic instruments. Yet, it has been argued that these scales may fail to capture critical distinctive challenges and experiences of youngsters in this context. This presentation focuses on the development, validation and application of a new specific tool for the self-reported evaluation of quality of life among adolescents (12-18y) in CYWP: the Quality of Life in Youth Services Scale (QOLYSS).

Methods: A mixed-method strategy covering a range of qualitative and quantitative methods was used to develop and validate the new quality of life tool, with a focus on the first-person perspective.

Results: The critical steps in the development and psychometric evaluation of the QOLYSS will be presented, as well as the applicability of the tool in daily practice. The findings provided strong evidence supporting the tool’s content-related validity, (test-retest) reliability and construct validity.

Discussion: The QOLYSS has proven to be a valid, reliable, and appropriate tool to obtain a better understanding of the quality of life of youngsters in CYWP from their own perspectives. It is further developed as an action-oriented practical tool to create an open dialogue with youngsters in everyday practice that helps to take more well-informed and shared decisions on priorities in person-centered support provision.

ABSTRACT. Theoretically, there are two possible relationships between emotions and quality of life. On the one hand, mindsets of negative emotions ( i.e., the beliefs that individuals hold about whether negative emotions are malleable or unchangeable), may play a crucial role in quality of life. On the other hand, one’s subjective well-being may also influence one’s mindsets about negative emotions. However, few studies examine the association between well-being and negative emotion mindsets. As such, we conducted a two-wave school-based longitudinal study among N=2,206 primary and secondary school students in Hong Kong (age range 10 to 20, age mean = 13.99, SD=1.59, male n=985, 44.7%). Two hundred and fifty-eight Grades 5 and 6 students and 1,948 secondary school students (Grades 7 to 11) participated in classroom surveys administered by trained research assistants in June 2021 and June 2022 with an interval of one year. We measured demographic factors, family structure, family economic conditions, mindsets of depression, anxiety and stress, and subjective well-being. Four cross-lagged analyses were conducted to examine the relations between negative emotion mindsets (indexed by anxiety, depression and stress) and subjective well-being. Results showed that adolescents who believed negative emotions can be changed at Time 1 positively predicted subjective well-being at Time 2 while subjective well-being at Time 1 also predicted growth mindsets of negative emotions at Time 2. Specifically, we found that fixed mindsets about anxiety at Time 1 marginally predicted well-being at Time 2, but subjective well-being at Time 1 significantly predicted fixed mindsets about anxiety after one year (Time 2). Besides, believing that depression is unchangeable at Time 1 negatively predicted well-being at T2, and poor well-being predicted a more fixed mindset about unchangeability of depression. Furthermore, a similar bi-directional association was found between mindsets of stress and well-being. The effect sizes of the associations ranged from small (0.06) to medium (0.09) after controlling gender, age, and family factors. These findings provide evidence that supports the reciprocal effects model and further our understanding of the longitudinal and bidirectional relationship between well-being and mindset of negative emotions. The findings can be used by helping professionals in the education and social work contexts to promote children's and adolescents’ quality of life.

ABSTRACT. The literature and related practice connecting community well-being and community development (CD) is strong. Among scholars, activists, policymakers, politicians, and many others from various perspectives, improving the lives and health of community members remains a top priority. Despite the positive undertones around words like “development” and “well-being,” the intentions, processes, and outcomes of actions taken in the names of either are not always positive. Critical perspectives on CD and community well-being, such as dark side theory, challenge naïve perspectives about the failures, mistakes, misguided moments, and tragedies resulting from ill-advised development and well-being actions, even those with good intentions. Using “dark side” approaches as a lens for teaching, research, and practice creates high interest and accessibility for its users, but more work interrogating these issues are needed.

For this presentation, the presenters will continue their work showcased at the 2022 ISQOLS conference regarding the darker side(s) of CD and community well-being. This work questions the very foundations of both fields, specifically: (1) Who are community development and well-being practitioners? and (2) What constitutes success in CD and community well-being work? Dark side perspectives showcase a lack of a single correct answer to these questions (or conversely, a multitude of answers including those that are incorrect) for study and practice. Critical perspectives that include dark side perspectives intentionally focus on action, dialogue, and reflection in research, education, policy, and practice. Particular attention will be directed at intentions, harm, and power. The presenters share examples of where CD and community well-being work has gone to the ‘dark side”. Specific examples span contexts from local and international development work, wildlife conservation, downtown development, tourism, community innovation hubs, food security, and others from which the presenters have direct global and local experiences.

ABSTRACT. Purpose: Resilient communities take collective action to respond to adverse events and support recovery. Across the US, the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted higher risk, vulnerable populations, exposing gaps in community networks and public health systems. Complex community problems such as those created by the pandemic cannot be solved by one organization or sector alone. To understand the underlying nature of community problems and respond effectively, broad-based multi-sectoral collaboration is required. In 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided state level funding to address pandemic-related disparities and advance health equity by enhancing and strengthening diverse partnerships between existing organizations serving vulnerable and underserved populations. To support these efforts, a mixed-methods approach was used to identify baseline characteristics of existing community networks in three Midwestern counties with high COVID-19 vulnerability. Data were used to enhance community network development and increase community capacity and resilience. Methods: Social network analysis (SNA) was used to quantitatively describe existing connections between organizations. Qualitative data were collected through “lived experience” interviews with individuals from underserved, vulnerable populations, and guided listening sessions with existing community organizations. Community field intervention teams which included members of the community, identified individuals and organizations to include in the analysis. SNA data regarding connections, communication, collaboration, and trust between identified organizations were collected by a 12-question Likert scaled online REDCap survey. Edge density, degree centrality, and betweenness centrality were calculated and subgroups identified using the R software package. Thematic analysis of all qualitative data was conducted independently by three researchers and combined with SNA results. Results were shared via a power point presentation by researchers with participating organizations, followed by a discussion of how the results could be used to strengthen and diversify existing community networks to enhance community response to challenges. Results: SNA survey response rates for the counties ranged from 37.5% to 43.5%. Average trust between connected organizations was high in each county (>4/5). However, network connectivity in each county was low. Subgroups focused on specific issues such as mental health or youth development, were identified in each county. Additionally, health care organizations such as local hospitals played central or broker roles in each network, connecting organizations which otherwise would stay unconnected. Several isolated organizations were also noted in existing networks. Thematic findings reflected inequitable access to services/resources, frustration with community support during and after the pandemic, and the need for greater collaboration between organizations. Conclusion: The ability to triangulate SNA data with qualitative data provided practical insights about the role networks play in community resilience to challenges. The data identified areas for improvement including the need to foster stronger connections by integrating subgroups and isolates to increase network robustness and preparedness. Researcher presentation of the results helped these communities visualize existing relationships by describing the relationship between network organizations, as well as identifying missing relationships and weak connections. It also provided the opportunity for engagement of network members in discussions of how networks could build upon existing high levels of trust to strengthen and diversify the network.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study was to explore the relative importance of lifestyle factors and living conditions when predicting social isolation and sense of community in a representative sample of 12,871 participants from Nova Scotia collected in 2019. Using multiple regression and measures of relative importance based on the Lindeman, Merenda and Gold (lmg) method, we identified which variables are most important to predicting measures of social isolation and sense of community. Twenty-two predictors accounted for 46% of the variance in sense of community and the top 10 predictors accounted for 36% of the variance: satisfaction with quality of the natural environment in the neighbourhood (ri = .09), life satisfaction (ri = .05), number of neighbours one can rely on (ri = 05), confidence in institutions (ri = .05), feeling better off due to government policy or programming (ri = .04), feeling safe walking in neighbourhood after dark (ri = .03), mental health (ri = .02), number of friends one can rely on (ri = .02), volunteering (ri = .02), and perceptions of time adequacy (ri = .02). Only six of these variables were also the top predictors of social isolation. These results show that community-level and individual-level variables are substantial predictors of social well-being. The effect sizes differ between models, suggesting there may be important predictors of feeling socially isolated not accounted for. This study may inform community-level programming and policy that seeks to promote social well-being for individuals and their communities.

ABSTRACT. IDEAL is a government-funded project, and its goal is to develop an online participation platform to improve the quality of life in rural communities. A methodological issue faced in applied research on the quality of life is the importance of participatory approaches that include all age cohorts. Our applied research project aims to empower local communities and residents to raise their quality of life. Individual mobility, health care, and leisure behaviour are of specific interest. Focus lies on cohorts of 18-25 years and 65 years and older. Young adults in economically underdeveloped rural communities generally are less educated and are living on a below-average income. Senior citizens are disproportionally isolated: they depend on social services, are mobility-impaired, and are more likely to be poor. To better address the needs of these target groups, an online participation platform is tested. To implement this platform, a 'digital pilot' is needed. They serve as an administrator for the online platform and connect citizens with local authorities. Not all citizens are digitally competent. Literature suggests that cohorts aged 65 and older seldom have access to technical devices and infrastructure (exacerbated by rural location). They lack skills, support, and openness toward new technologies. To enable digitally less capable groups, the 'digital pilot' is supported by the fieldwork of 'analogue pilots'. The latter gathers ideas, needs, and complaints from non-digital community members and shares their observations on the online platform. Besides the development of a participatory online platform, our applied research includes community workshops, narrative interviews, and a survey in three rural communities in Germany. We faced the following methodological issues: (1) Limited accessibility of both age cohorts through traditional sampling strategies, e.g., due to lack of online participation and more secluded forms of living; (2) A strong scepticism and distrust towards researchers and public institutions; (3) Self-perceptions of being left behind, combined with a ‘nothing will ever change’ mentality. Our paper will present this applied research (in progress) and address accompanying challenges and necessary strategies. We suggest that using an online participation platform will help to organize real-life social interactions and to direct attention to health literacy and mobility options. In doing so, it will strengthen participation in general and thus contribute to the quality of life of in rural communities. The aim is to create an environment where government and citizens can continuously advance existing local planning processes.

ABSTRACT. This presentation focuses on integrating the hierarchical model of wellbeing (Sirgy, 2020) with the personal wellbeing interventions that have been most effective. The hierarchy proposes that positive balance is critical, such that the individual experiences a preponderance of desirable states over undesirable states spread across the multiple levels of analysis. Specifically, the six hierarchical levels of wellbeing are (1) physiological, (2) emotional, (3) cognitive, (4) meta-cognitive, (5) developmental, and (6) social-ecological. At the physiological level, the goal of personal wellbeing interventions is to achieve a preponderance of neurochemicals related to positive emotions relative to neurochemicals related to negative emotions. Examples of wellbeing interventions at the physiological level are the use of antidepressants, and engaging in physical activity. At the emotional level, the goal of personal wellbeing interventions is to achieve a preponderance of positive affect (happiness, joy, etc.) relative to negative affect (anger, sadness, etc.). Many of the heavily researched personal wellbeing interventions can be construed at this level of analysis, and many are successful at increasing emotional wellbeing (e.g., expressing gratitude or savoring life’s joys). At the cognitive level, the goal of personal wellbeing interventions is to achieve a preponderance of domain satisfaction (satisfaction in salient and multiple life domains such as family life, work life, etc.) relative to dissatisfaction in other life domains. Examples include increasing engagement in multiple roles and domains, increasing role enrichment, and managing role conflict. At the meta-cognitive level, the goal of personal wellbeing interventions is to achieve a preponderance of positive evaluations about one’s life using certain standards of comparison (satisfaction with one’s life compared to one’s past life, the life of family members, etc.) relative to negative evaluations about one’s life using similar or other standards of comparison. This level of the hierarchy has been referred to as life satisfaction. Examples of personal wellbeing interventions include engaging in downward comparisons, and evaluating life using ability-based standards. Ascending the hierarchical ladder, the goal for the developmental level is to achieve a preponderance of positive psychological traits (such as self-acceptance, personal growth, etc.) relative to negative psychological traits (pessimism, hopelessness, etc.). Examples of personal wellbeing interventions that work at this level include using character strengths in daily activities, and cultivating hope and optimism. The developmental level is often equated with eudaimonic wellbeing which emphasizes personal growth and development. At the most macro level (social-ecological), personal wellbeing interventions must focus on achieving a preponderance of perceived social resources (social acceptance, social actualization, social contribution, etc.) relative to perceived social constraints (social exclusion, ostracism, etc.). Examples include engaging in civic duties, and volunteer work. The presentation will match personal wellbeing interventions with each level of the hierarchy and draw conclusions about the fit and suggest future directions. Reference: Sirgy, M. J. (2020). Positive Balance: A Theory of Well-Being and Positive Mental Health. Switzerland: Springer Nature.

ABSTRACT. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, eight million Ukrainians have had to flee their country, close to one million of them made their way to Germany, and about 3,000 are currently registered in Aachen. The majority of these Ukrainian refugees are women and children. Besides providing them with basic needs, increasing socio-cultural integration and well-being should also become a part of the political refugee agenda. So far, no assessments of any well-being interventions have been conducted on refugees. Therefore, we aim to assess how the combination of mindful self-compassion (MSC) and loving-kindness mediation (LKM) can impact Ukrainian refugees' socio-cultural integration and happiness in Aachen. The study design involves three study groups: 1) Ukrainian refugees who receive a combination of MSC and LKM in Ukrainian, 2) Ukrainian refugees who receive a combination of MSC and LKM in English, and 3) Ukrainian refugees who receive no intervention. The happiness of our participants will be assessed before and after the intervention. Before participants join the study, they are all asked the global happiness question of how they felt yesterday. To ensure that participants stay in the study, only some complete the more time-intensive Daily Reconstruction Method for one week after the intervention, whereas some complete the less time-intensive global happiness question one month after the intervention to determine the long-term impact of the intervention. This study design allows us to not only assess the possible impact of the intervention on the Ukrainian refugees’ integration and happiness but also what role the language of the intervention plays. This study has two overarching goals: 1) To provide Ukrainian refugees, adults, and especially children, with tools to deal with their trauma and 2) to provide governments with possible additional tools to enhance refugee integration and happiness not only of Ukrainians but also of other refugees and migrants, to ensure economic, social, and cultural inclusivity.

ABSTRACT. Background: Interactive technologies, such as social network platforms, can have harmful effects on people’s well-being (Castellacci & Tveito, 2018). IT companies increasingly acknowledge this and take first actions to reduce harm (Gonzalez, 2018; Pardes, 2018). However, interactive technology can also be intentionally designed to promote well-being and bring positive value to people’s lives (Desmet & Pohlmeyer, 2013).

Aims: We will present a conceptual framework (Wiese et al., 2020) which outlines how knowledge on Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs) (Lyubomirsky, 2007; Lyubomirsky & Layous, 2013) can inform a) design strategies and b) tools to measure (intentional) well-being effects of interactive technology. We demonstrate how PPIs can inspire the (re)design of everyday consumer technology, such as messaging services or social network platforms, addressing a wider variety of use-cases than direct digital adaptations of PPIs, i.e., behavioral intervention technologies.

Method: To derive the framework (Wiese et al., 2020), insights from an exploratory, in-depth interviewing study (Wiese, Pohlmeyer, & Hekkert, 2019) were validated against and enriched with literature in Positive Psychology, Behavior Change, and Experience Design.

Results: Interactive technology’s greatest contribution to well-being potentially lies in the support of well-being-enhancing activities. These largely overlap with taxonomies of PPIs. Activity-support-mechanisms in design can be grouped into three categories: to a) trigger, b) motivate and c) facilitate activities. Each of these categories can be shaped by design.

Conclusion: Consumer technology is deeply engrained in our everyday lives. Designing these technologies to actively foster well-being, can thus create positive impact on a large scale. The research and practice of Positive Psychology has much to offer these efforts.

ABSTRACT. Background Society is facing major challenges in terms of an increased burden of preventable health problems, high work absence, demographic changes and rising social inequalities in health. Health promotion and illness prevention is crucial for sustaining and increasing employment rates, for maintaining sustainable welfare systems, and for improving population health and wellbeing. Effective health promotive and illness preventive measures are therefore highly warranted. The 5 Ways to Wellbeing course is a 6-week course targeting individuals at risk of compromised health and low wellbeing, aiming to improve the participants’ wellbeing by practicing the five ways to wellbeing activities: to connect, to be active, to take notice, to keep learning and to give.

Aims To scientifically evaluate the 5 Ways to Wellbeing course, a novel course-based measure aiming to promote wellbeing, social integration, health, and work adherence.

Method We investigate course effects on subjective wellbeing, self-reported health, and work adherence among two different groups with varying health and work life integration, namely i) clients in Norwegian Healthy Life Centres (HLCs) (N=300) and ii) users of the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) system (N=100). The course participants are compared to two groups of control subjects, including i) 1200 individuals participating in the Healthy Life Centrestudy (in a non-randomised trial) and ii) 100 individuals in NAV receiving follow up as usual (in a randomised controlled trial). Outcome measures include subjective wellbeing, physical and mental health, mastery, social integration, physical activity, and work adherence. Outcomes are assessed using validated measuring tools at four time points: before course start, directly after course end, and at 6 and 15 months after the end of the course.

Results and conclusion The study is ongoing, and data are still being collected. Preliminary analyses have been conducted and the results will be presented at the conference. Preliminary analyses show highly promising results for a number of outcomes, including improved life satisfaction, reduced loneliness, better self-rated health, and higher work adherence after attending the course. Should our final findings support significant positive effects, the intervention may be disseminated to HLCs and NAVs nationwide in Norway in and thus reach a very large number of individuals in need.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the extent in which economic growth achieves the improvement of general welfare. For this purpose, we combine input-output analysis with welfare economics to measure whether the sectoral decomposition of economic growth is compatible with the development of economic sectors that better promote social welfare. Thus, we develop a new methodological framework that all countries could implement it. In this paper, we discuss comparative empirical findings for four European countries, i.e. Germany, Greece, Italy and Netherlands.

ABSTRACT. Mexico and South Africa are characterized by a strong lineal bond resulting in a strong familialist regime, notably regarding youth population living with their family, unemployed youth living with their family, large size households, older people living with their children. In other words, family relationships play major role in the regulation of Mexican and South African societies and in terms of social bonds the lineal bond appears as the most significant one amongst the other types of social attachment features (the theory of social attachment contains four types of social bond, which refer to different spheres of morality and normative systems: the lineal bond (domestic morality), the elective participation bond (associative morality), the organic participation bond (occupational morality) and the citizenship bond (civic morality)). The primary goal of this study is to compare the evolution of magnitude and nature of lineal bond in Mexico and South Africa between 2000 and 2020 by employing South Africa General Household Survey and Census provided by INEGI. Secondary, we will discover which capabilities profiles composed of multidimensional poverty (including dwelling situation, education, social security, material deprivation), income poverty, economic activity, and social classes are emerging by degree of lineal bond. Related to this latter aim, the main question is whether people living in strong lineal bond households are poorer and/or mostly disadvantaged in the labor market compared to other households. Moreover, this study: explores whether some vulnerable groups live in strong lineal bond households compared to others; investigates whether vulnerable people have significantly different capabilities profiles compared to others; and tests whether capabilities profiles of vulnerable people with strong lineal bond are significantly different than those of others with strong lineal bond.

ABSTRACT. In the happiness literature there is evidence from empirical research that reports high happiness on some societies, that at the same time experience deprivation on material needs. This conclusion is uncomfortable for interpretation, which opens the possibility to idealize poverty, with severe political interpretations (if they are happy, they do not need attention from public policies). In this vein, some considerations are put into stake: -Some invalidate happiness research as a useful tool to understand quality of life in certain societies, or in general. In this vein, Amartya Sen has proposed an adaptation effect, as people adapt to the most extreme circumstances in order to have a happy life, which in turn may condition results from happiness research. -Others suggest the existence of a paradox which requires deeper thought. Carol Graham has coined it as “the paradox of happy peasants and miserable millionaires”.

In this research we aim to open the minds to other interpretations from an interdisciplinary point of view. We intend to put some light on these puzzling results, that contradict standard economic theory and the classic development interpretations (in a nutshell, more material welfare brings more happiness). We take some ideas from Anthropology, Ecology, Decolonization studies and Post-development theories to try to better understand the paradox, and arrive to a theory that better permits to make sense of this reality.

The theory is still under construction, and still needs discussion to be a solid theory. Some preliminary thoughts are as follows: -It is not possible to put all societies that have high happiness and material deprivation under an umbrella theory. Every society has their specifications that may explain those reasons. (This thought erodes the possibility to find a general theory). -Being aware of the difficulty of finding a general theory, some general elements may be useful for understanding the paradox, namely: * The importance of connection: with other people (relational goods and social capital) and with nature in general are not taken into account, and should be considered in order to understand the happiness of poor people. Those connections may be the key of high happiness even though people may experience low material affluence. *As a result of the previous point, the development agenda (i.e. creation of markets, maximizing economic growth, even standard social welfare programs) may be policies that maximize happiness in appearance or in the short term, but in reality they undermine, or at best do not consider, connection of each person with other people and nature.

As a conclusion to move forward to achieve lives that worth to be lived (happiness with no deprivation), we propose that political theories that are more in accordance with frugality (i.e. epicureanism, degrowth, pacifism, Gandhian economics, Buddhist economics, to name a few) would be desirable to implement on a large scale. This involves the reconsideration of the social construct of what poor and poverty means for society and for academics.

This proposal is an open invitation to think, and we aim to nurture it from comments from participants.

ABSTRACT. Background: SHALOM is the Spiritual Health and Life-Orientation Measure. It is based on the Four Domains Model of Spiritual Health/Well-Being that comprises 20 items that assess spiritual well-being, as reflected in the quality of relationships that each person has with themselves, others, the environment, and/or with God(Fisher.1998,2016). WHOQOL is the World Health Organization Quality of Life assessment instrument ((Skevington et al., 1997; Casamali et al.,2019). WHOQOL-100 is based on six domains including physical, psychological, independence, social, environmental, spiritual, and independence that comprises 100 items. WHOQL-BREF is based on the physical, psychological, social relations, and environmental domains that comprise 26 items. Shalom(Hebrew שָׁלוֹם šālōm) means peace, harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity, welfare, tranquility, and health. It can also be used idiomatically to mean both hello and goodbye. Shalom is the human being dwelling at peace in all his or her relationships: with God, with self, with fellow with nature(Woltersforff,1983). Shalom at its highest is enjoyment in one’s relationships. Methods: Literature survey about SHALOM, WHOQOL, and Shalom. Logical and comparative analysis of these concepts Results: WHOQOL domain also means physical, psychological, social, and environmental health, which means holistic health as four dimensions of health that integrate independence and spirituality of the six domains of WHOQOL-100. Domains of SHALOM means Holistic Health as five dimensions of health because it includes relationships that each person has with themselves, others, the environment, and/or with God which include spiritual health. Shalom means holistic health as five dimensions of health including spiritual health. WHOQOL, SHALOM, and Shalom can be understood in terms of a holistic health perspective. Discussion: WHOQOL-BREF has physical, psychological, social, and environmental domains to measure the quality of life (WHO,1996). These multidimensional domains mean physical, psychological, social relationships, and environmental quality of life, which means holistic well-being. Health is defined as a complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. So Health is multidimensional well-being between minimum and maximum. SHALOM includes spiritual health in the worldview of various religions, but Shalom includes spiritual health in the biblical worldview.

ABSTRACT. South African township youth shared their lived experience of hope and hopelessness in a series of focus-group discussions conducted in a small university town in the Eastern Cape Province, characterised by high levels of unemployment and poverty.

The cues used to introduce the topic of hope to the focus-group participants were based on twelve items in the revised LOT dispositional optimism scale and Snyder’s future state hope scale. These items had been presented to respondents in the 2022 nationally representative South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS).

The focus-group discussions offered an opportunity to flesh out the local understanding of abstract concepts of hope, and ‘agency’ and ‘pathways’ to attain self-defined goals among Xhosa speakers. Discussants agreed on the Xhosa term for hope as ‘themba’. They endorsed the importance of remaining hopeful in life and reported how they tried to overcome obstacles to realise future expectations. Major setbacks in life typically included the death of significant others such as role models and breadwinners. Discussants had experienced difficulties in completing their education, accessing employment and business opportunities; and had suffered loss of livelihoods during the Covid-19 pandemic. There was consensus on the importance of seeking advice from trusted persons to cope with failure and dashed hopes rather than resorting to dependence on alcohol or drugs.

The meaning of survey items is known to get lost in translation when applied cross-culturally. The focused discussions allowed for cognitive testing of modern Western perspectives on hope and optimism in a South African setting.

ABSTRACT. It seems plausible that to achieve mental health, we need to balance our hopes for a better future with constructive ways of coping with the inevitable challenges and disappointments we endure during a lifetime. While hope allows us to focus on what is important to us and to feel strengthened by the prospect of possibly achieving it, constructive ways of coping allow us to deal with stressful experiences and its related negative emotions. Thus, the two could work in tandem to help us both invest in a better future and deal with the disappointment if we fail. Also, hope and coping show marked similarities, as both are determined by context, are meaning-based, dynamic and both affect wellbeing in difficult circumstances. This suggests that hope and coping are founded on similar fundamental mechanisms and might work together to strengthen wellbeing. In this paper, we look into the theoretical relations between hope and coping, as well as some empirical analyses of hope among a sample of adults from the US. It appears that constructive forms of hope and coping can be substitutes to some degree, but that a combination of both leads to the best outcomes for mental health. However, we have to be careful about adopting a ‘more is always better’ perspective, as both hope and coping could also lead to worse mental health or life outcomes, especially once they no longer fuel a constructive, active attitude.

ABSTRACT. During adolescence, comprehensive changes take place, which are accompanied by demands that the social environment places on the adolescent. In the course of this process, the various socialization instances confront adolescents with diverse ideas about which values, interests, and competencies they should have developed at which point in time in order to successfully manage the transition to adulthood. In the context of the tension between their own development and the constantly changing demands, young people formulate their ideas about who they want to be, how they want to live and what they want to have achieved in the future. How do young people, whose social situation is precarious look to the future? What wishes and hopes do they have?

The data basis is formed by 16 guideline-based interviews with young people aged 15 to 21 years. The data collection took place in the youth detention center Berlin-Brandenburg, the youth probation center Berlin and in the context of the "street". Based on selected structural characteristics, the sample shows that the precarious milieu was well met. Many of the young people come from families with precarious backgrounds, and they themselves have a high proportion of characteristics that are associated with a high risk of living on or below the relative poverty line in the future. The data analysis was multimethod and based on the documentary method and grounded theory.

The boys and girls represent traditional values that are reflected in their desires and hopes. In view of their fragile biographies and family histories, most of the young people interviewed wish for an typical, "ideal" family in which they and their partners each take on the classic, gender-specific roles and raise several children. Their parents serve the young people as a negative foil to their own life desires and dreams. They not only want to do better than their parents in raising their children, but they also want to have a "good job" one day and to be financially independent of state benefits. Many of the young people, especially the boys, would like to be "rich" and flaunt the associated status symbols. Since almost all the young people left school without a diploma, many of the plans can be described as unrealistic and unreflective. Some of the young people interviewed are already fatalistic about the future. They have often tried to catch up on school-leaving qualifications, hold down a steady and poorly paid job, or are separated from their partners and children.

The future paths of young people seem to be predetermined by their previous biography and socialization. The traditional values and the associated aspired and standardized roles seem to give them security in view of their precarious social situation and to hold out the prospect of social recognition. Many of the young people have dreams and desires that are unlikely to come true, partly because they have not learned to muster the willingness, motivation and initiative needed to master school or take on a permanent job.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this presentation is to explore the definition of collective hope as the shared desire for a better future not only for oneself, but for the entire social community, the belief that a better future for all is possible but not necessarily guaranteed or even likely, and the trust in the human capacity to cooperate and support each other towards the realization of a better world despite current struggles and challenges. Conceptually we chose an interdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from Positive Psychology, Futures Studies, and Pragmatic Hope Philosophy.

After introducing the concept of collective hope, we present the nature and role of images of the future in terms of probable, possible and desired future trends and scenarios. Based on data collected with the Hope Barometer across 12 countries in November 2022 (N=9,466), we evaluate people’s long-term future expectations regarding the general quality of life in their country, social trends and expected as well as wished-for future scenarios. We then relate these expectations to perceived hope and social well-being. Our results suggest that long-term social expectations are significantly more pessimistic in richer countries like Austria and Switzerland than in poorer countries like India and Nigeria and that hope levels are significantly higher in countries outside Europe like Nigeria and Israel. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of participants in this study preferred a social-sustainable over an individualist-competitive future scenario. Whereas future prospects had a significant connection to hope and (social) well-being, desirable images of the future hardly displayed an effect. Our findings highlight the importance of encouraging people to develop new positive pictures of the future which could foster hope, belief, and trust in a flourishing and sustainable world and to get engaged in its realization.

ABSTRACT. This research aims to explore factors influencing subjective wellbeing of economic and health domains of 400 people in Surat Thani Province, Thailand. Multiple regression analysis was employed for examining subjective wellbeing factors. The results showed that for the economic domain consists of four sub-domain including work, income, debt and savings showed the average of 4.17 out of 5. The health domain consists four sub-domains including physical health, mental health, access to healthcare services and leisure all together showed the average of 3.97. By using multiple regression analysis, it was found that factors affecting subjective wellbeing of economic domain were amount of debt and working for a daily paid job. For the health domain subjective wellbeing, monthly income, health condition and having health assurance significantly affected health subjective wellbeing at the level of 0.05.

ABSTRACT. Background: Mothers’ wellbeing and mental health are fundamental to their health and their future, their children’s development, and their family’s welfare - and hence also the next generation. A sizable literature indicates, however, that mothers are at excess risk of psychological distress, mental disorders, and reduced life satisfaction during the postpartum period and in the years thereafter. How can we prevent maternal illbeing and promote and sustain wellbeing? To date, the co-development and interrelations of maternal wellbeing and illbeing from pregnancy and onwards are scarcely studied. Further knowledge is therefore needed to inform theory and effective means to strengthen health and quality of life and facilitate economic resilience and a sustainable future. Aim: To gain further insights into the stability and change in maternal wellbeing (WB) and psychological illbeing (IB), their interrelations and the role of family socio-economy across four formative life phases including pregnancy, the early postnatal period, toddlerhood, and child school age. Method: We used data from 85,000 women participating in the large, prospective Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study covering five assessments over eight years. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM) were run to study the long-term relationship between WB and IB at both the within-person and between-person levels. WB and IB were measured by the Satisfaction with Life Scale and the 5-item version of the Symptom Checklist assessing anxiety and depressive symptoms. Parental education and household income were obtained from Norwegian administrative registers at the baseline year. Results: Our unconstrained RI-CLPM model showed good fit (RMSEA=.02; CFI=.99; TLI=.99) and the covariance between the time-invariant stable trait factors was estimated to be -.63. We observed significant autoregressive effects of WB (within-person stability) that increased systematically over time. For IB, stability was more pronounced during pregnancy and between child age 3 and 8 years. We also observed significant, but modest cross-lagged effects indicating that WB and IB are prospectively interrelated also at the within-person level, particularly from child age 3 years. Household income at the outset, and to a lesser degree parental education, significantly predicted development of both WB and IB over time. Conclusion and implications: Our study provides robust insights into the relationships between mothers’ wellbeing and illbeing from pregnancy to child age 8 years. A substantial part of the stability and covariance between WB and IB likely reflect time-invariant individual differences. Yet, after accounting for all time-invariant unobserved confounding, we still find both unidirectional and reciprocal intra-individual relations. Low maternal life satisfaction signals future anxiety and depressive problems, and psychological ill-being also indicates future deterioration in mothers’ overall life satisfaction. Importantly, wellbeing promotion may act as a preventive measure against future mental health problems. Likewise, measures targeting family economy may substantially contribute to mothers’ wellbeing (or illbeing) – and hence also their children and families’ welfare.

ABSTRACT. The COVID-19 pandemic caused social isolation and restrictions on daily activities, which creates concerns about women's mental ill-being since they were deemed among the more vulnerable, even before the pandemic. This paper aims to follow the same cohort of women from pre – to during the pandemic to obtain the change in their ill-being while controlling for the pre-disposed depressive symptoms experienced before the pandemic. We use the South African National Income Dynamics Survey and its extension, the Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey dataset, to analyse the ill-being of women (Patient Health Questionnaire-2 scale, depressive feelings and little interest in doing things). The dataset has a few limitations where it lacks household-level questions, personality traits and religious beliefs; some variables were not reported in all waves, while the sample was limited to people with phones. We utilise an ordered logit model with fixed effects to consider the ordinal structure of the data and account for the time-invariant effects. Our results suggest that education, marital status, employment status, income level and having a person who has gone hungry in the household worsen women's ill-being. The median depressive symptoms of women significantly increased over time with a U-shape relationship between ill-being and the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, women that felt depressed prior to the pandemic experienced a greater shock in their mental ill-being in the first stage of lockdown compared to those that have never experienced any depressive symptoms. There is a need for more research on the ill-being of women and appropriate policy interventions that focus on protecting and improving women's psychological ill-being in developing countries.

ABSTRACT. Health is the important dimension of the overall subjective QOL, where mental health is highly significant in determine subjective QOL. However, mental health disorders and symptoms are usually studied, while association of positive mental health and subjective QOL were studied less often. The aim of this study was to examine whether sociodemographic characteristics and specific aspects of positive mental health predict subjective quality of life and to what extent. The sample comprises 715 participants from general adult population in Croatia (315 men and 400 women), aged from 18 to 64 years (mean age 28.23 years), who did not report any depressive or anxiety disorders. Subjective QOL was measured with Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI), and positive mental health was measured with Mental health continuum (MHC-SF), general part of survey comprised questions on gender, age, education and self-assessed economic status. Multivariate regression models reveal that the most significant predictors of subjective QOL with significance at p<.01 were MHC-SF items “life has a sense of direction or meaning” (9.7% variance explained) and “society is a good place, or is becoming a better place, for all people” (3.2% variance explained). Male gender of the participants was also a significant predictor of subjective QOL (2.1% variance explained) as well as the participants’ self-perceived socioeconomic status (1.4% variance explained). Models revealed that the following items were significant predictors of subjective QOL although at the level of p<.05: “how often did you feel happy” (0.5% variance explained), “experiences that challenged you to grow and become a better person” (0.5% variance explained) and the item “way our society works makes sense to you” (0.5% variance explained). Present research contributes to the better understanding how specific aspects of positive mental health are significant to the overall subjective QOL and sets the ground for further research in this area.

ABSTRACT. Pension income is a decisive factor for life satisfaction in later life. Upon retirement, income is drawn from previously acquired entitlements to public, occupational or private pensions. In particular, public pensions can help retirees with low socioeconomic status to achieve higher retirement income and attenuate negative income shocks at retirement. This study addresses the relationship between income changes and life satisfaction at retirement entry. Of particular interest is whether receiving more public pensions is associated with higher life satisfaction and whether this association is stronger for low socioeconomic status. The study uses data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) from respondents in 17 European countries between 2005 and 2015. In addition, data on employment biographies are included in the analysis, which were collected using the SHARELIFE questionnaire. Fixed effects models are estimated for longitudinal analyses. The results show that higher income from public pensions is not associated with higher life satisfaction. However, especially for low socioeconomic status, the share of public pension on total income seems to make a difference: life satisfaction increases with the share of public pension, especially when including employment biographical factors. Public pensions may contribute to higher life satisfaction among retirees with low socioeconomic status and thus reduce social inequalities in life satisfaction. This is particularly the case if public pensions compensate for lower pension entitlements from other sources based on the employment history. Further research is needed to better understand the role of public pensions on life satisfaction in light of employment histories and in different country contexts.

ABSTRACT. The nature of the relationship between measures of subjective wellbeing and income is one of the key empirical questions in the economics of wellbeing. The first significant paper in the economic literature on subjective wellbeing (Easterlin, 1974) focused directly on this issue and the subject remains a major focus of research. One reason for the high level of interest in the relationship between measures of subjective wellbeing and income is that empirical estimates of this relationship are fundamental to the use of subjective wellbeing measures in cost-benefit analysis. Most of the empirical literature on the income coefficient on life satisfaction focuses on issues of causal identification or the measurement of life satisfaction. However, the quality of income measures can also be expected to impact significantly on the estimated relationship between income and life satisfaction.

This paper uses linked administrative and survey data (n=21,642) to explore the impact of measurement error on the strength of the relationship between income and life satisfaction. Based on linked administrative and survey data the paper examines the impact of using employer-report measures of income as opposed to the self-report measures typical of most survey data used in research on subjective wellbeing. Interestingly, the self-report income measure – which is collected in broad income bands – correlates more strongly with life satisfaction than does the more precise employer-report measure. This relationship does not appear to reflect differences in the scope of income captured by each measure and it is hypothesised that respondent personality traits such as optimism or pessimism may inflate the cross-sectional correlation between self-report income and life satisfaction.

ABSTRACT. Birth rates have continued to fall in many countries in recent years, while life expectancy has increased due to lower mortality rates and advances in medical practice. According to data from the World Bank, the total number of births per woman in China is below the replacement rate for the 21st century. The Chinese government ended its one-child policy and instituted the two-child policy in 2015. Such demographic phenomena have a significant economic and social impact. For example, as the proportion of elderly people increases the financial burden of society increases since the number of young workers in the labor market decreases and so does economic production and total consumption in the consumer market. There are various explanations for why the fertility rate problem has emerged. One is that people want to have children but are subject to economic restrictions (Caldwell et al., 2003). Another is that the traditional concept of the family has become diminished as people's perspectives on life have changed, and the emphasis has shifted to individual development and achievement, resulting in a decline in fertility (van de Kaa, 1987; Mason et al., 1995). Understanding peoples’ choices regarding parenthood is important to reveal why the fertility rate is declining. Results from a telephone survey among mothers show that 81% of respondents are satisfied with their motherhood and agree that motherhood is the most important thing in life (Erickson et al., 2005). However, many empirical analyses show that having children does not bring happiness (Blanchflower, 2009; Clark et al., 2008; Dolan et al., 2008; Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2013). At the same time, recent studies have also noted that happier people are more likely to have children (G. Baetschmann et al., 2016; Sophie C et al., 2016). In addition, growing income inequality causes people to focus more on their consumption than on parenthood, lowering the fertility rate. Will income inequality create a tunnel effect that people expect their income will move upwards in the future, increasing people's happiness and raising the fertility rate? This study examines the relationship between fertility rate, happiness, and income inequality in China while considering whether the relationship would change depending on the level of economic development in different regions.

ABSTRACT. The relationship between homeownership and life satisfaction is a well-established subject of research. The correlation is found to be mostly positive but varies in its magnitude depending on the research design and the investigated country. Other, mostly theoretical studies have argued that cultural and social preferences influence the relationship between housing tenure and subjective well-being. Claiming that these preferences are shaped by the design of the national housing markets and the respective housing policies, we analyse the influence of housing policies, market characteristics as well as an index of housing commodification on this relationship. Using cross-sectional multi-level regression analyses, we estimate the effect of homeownership on life satisfaction conditional on the financial burden of a mortgage of a self-occupied home. To do so, we use EU-SILC surveys and plausibilise our findings with Eurobarometer surveys from 21 EU countries that are also OECD members. Our main result is that the happiness-gap between homeowners and renters is larger in societies where the owner-occupied home plays an important role as a tradable good and investment compared to societies with a well-developed rental sector with high security of tenure. By that, we provide empirical evidence for the mentioned theoretical work. We conclude that not only housing policies but also the degree of commodification of housing are influential moderators on the association of homeownership and life satisfaction.

ABSTRACT. Unfortunately, despite research showing that receiving the COVID-19 vaccine is the best way to protect yourself, your loved ones, and your community against contracting the virus, vaccination rates in the Western world are slowing down, and there is a sense of increased complacency. We now know that negative emotions such as fear related to, for example, side effects influence peoples' attitudes towards receiving the vaccine. We also know that happier people make better health-related decisions since happier people are less inclined to engage in high-risk activities such as smoking. Given the aforementioned, the primary aim of this paper is to determine those factors most important for achieving higher levels of vaccination rates. We employ multiple supervised machine learning algorithms to achieve this aim. In our analyses, we include country-level factors for twenty-three countries in Europe, Africa and Australasia. These factors include happiness, collective emotions, economic and socio-economic features, COVID-19-related data, policies, and trust in institutions. To measure happiness, collective emotions and trust in vaccines and institutions, we derive time-series data from the Gross National Happiness.today project constructed using Big Data and Natural Language Processing techniques. Our dataset, which includes high-frequency daily data, is unique and has the advantage of being timeous. Our findings provide actionable policy insights which can potentially increase vaccine uptake.

ABSTRACT. Vaccines are clearly a mean to protect the life of the vaccinated and indirectly the lives of the other members in the society and hence the decision to get vaccinated is a proxy for individual concern with social welfare. This study asks whether the behaviour under a shock condition, such as the vaccination for COVID-19, can be predicted by other social welfare relevant behaviours in a locality – such as the ecological concerns of individuals living in a certain locality. Using big data from individual Tweets about vaccines (representative on province level) and actual vaccination behaviour on provincial level for England and Wales in 2019-2021) we implement sentiment analysis using AI algorithms to identify the pro- or anti-vax sentiment of each Tweet. Next, we compare the expressive rhetoric in Tweeting (which clearly does not have any direct practical effect on contagion) and actual vaccination behaviour when the cost of lives is importantly factored in the behaviour. Finally, we obtain instrumental variables – proxies for ecologically relevant behaviour such as the use of cars and the sorting of garbage in a living place before the pandemic, and we use these proxies for context of social welfare concern as a predictor of the individual emotion and preference towards vaccination. We employ the Culture Based development approach to quantifying local cultural context and the stock of local cultural capital to further delineate between the cost-benefit about vaccination and the clearly identified cultural bias on regional level. A hierarchical model shows clearly the statistical sources of influence on the final individual preference for or against vaccination. Our study helps to distinguish empirically the rational cost-benefit analysis about vaccination from the cultural impact of the local social-welfare concern. These findings are particularly helpful because they indicate how seeming bounded rationality emerges not due to cognitive boundedness, but due to cultural embeddedness and social pleasing of the context in which an individual finds themselves embedded.

ABSTRACT. Sentiment derived from microblogging websites is considered more and more valuable for studying the quality of life. However, the majority of the studies in natural language processing are based on the English language, leaving other languages underrepresented. To address this imbalance, this research compares various modeling techniques for sentiment analysis on a unique dataset of Flemish tweets, using an innovative experimental design that combines different preprocessing techniques and vector representations with different models to find the best-performing combination for our dataset. More specifically, we compare preprocessing techniques including stemming and lemmatization, and vector representations such as TFIDF, self-trained word embeddings, and pretrained word embeddings. Four different categories of models are compared: lexicon-based methods, traditional machine learning models, neural networks, and attention-based models. We conclude that while there was no clear difference in the performance of the traditional machine learning models, the lexicon-based approaches performed worse than the other models. Moreover, for the simple models, more preprocessing leads to better results, while the best-performing vector representation depends on the model. Finally, the attention-based model clearly outperformed the other techniques. However, a balance between computation costs and performance should be considered.

ABSTRACT. The primary goal of polygenic scores is to estimate individual-specific genetic predisposition and predict outcome. Knowledge on the mechanisms underlying the contribution of genetic factors to internalizing behaviors can inform developmental and psychosocial interventions. Childhood mental health problems have been associated with lower well-being and increased likelihood of substance use and risky behaviors later in life. We used a multi-polygenic score (MPS) approach to investigate whether parental genetic risk factors and proxies of depression and anxiety are associated with children’s internalizing problems due to genetic transmission or due to parental genetic liability that influences child’s internalizing behaviors via parenting environment (genetic nurture).

Data from the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study. 7,092 mother-father-child trios were enrolled in this prospective cohort study between 1999 and 2008. Polygenic scores for a range of mental health vulnerabilities (e.g., depression), cognitive performance, substance use, personality, and educational attainment for the mother, father, and child were computed. Mothers reported on their 8-year-old children’s depressive symptoms using the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (SMFQ) and child’s anxiety using the Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED).

Applied machine learning main goal has been to predict future outcomes. Elastic net regression with repeated cross-validation were conducted to select from and estimate contributions of the polygenic scores. The elastic net regression on child’s depressive symptoms predicted 1.3% of the variance with polygenic scores of child’s body mass index (BMI), child’s ADHD, mother’s neuroticism, child’s neuroticism, father’s neuroticism and mother’s major depression disorder (MDD) being important risk factors. The elastic net regression on child’s school anxiety predicted 0.5% of the variance with polygenic scores of child’s neuroticism, mother’s MDD, mother’s neuroticism, child’s MDD, fathers’ schizophrenia, and child’s BMI being important risk factors. Finally, 0.2% of the variance of child’s neuroticism at age 8 was explained by the MPS with polygenic scores of mother’s neuroticism, father’s cognitive performance skills, mother’s bipolar, child’s subjective well-being, and father’s schizophrenia as the most important predictors, respectively.

Results underlies importance of both direct and indirect genetic effects on children’s development of internalizing problems.

ABSTRACT. The relevance of the paper to the panel topic: Participatory budgeting has become an established method for involving community residents in decisions about community well being (Bartocci et. al.,2022). Similarly, the international community indicators movement has pushed toward data-driven community planning and localized problem solving (Ridzi, Stevens & Wray, 2022; Ridzi, Stevens, & Davern2020). In this presentation we explore how these approaches have been combined in a city in New York, USA. · The significance of the research – why it is distinctive and its contribution to the field. This case study is significant because it represents one of the first applications of the concept of smart cities that incorporate a technological infrastructure for collecting, aggregating, and analyzing real-time data (National League of Cities 2022) into a participatory budgeting process aimed at improving the lives of city residents. · The research question(s) and method – the theoretical/conceptual foundations for the research. This work builds on the conceptual foundations of the Community Indicator movement (Ridzi, Stevens &Wray, 2022; Ridzi, Stevens, & Davern 2020) and the Results Based Accountability approach (Friedman2005) as well as the broad and growing literature on participatory budgeting (PB) to analyze a case study of PB as implemented in a city in New York, USA. · The results to be reported. This presentation concludes that the combination of community indicators and participatory budgeting is an effective approach that can help to respond to criticisms that PB is ineffective (Sintomer et. al., 2016) because it ensures that the process is anchored to concrete data on local social problems and measurable outcomes of success. Works Cited Bartocci, L., Grossi, G., Mauro, S. G., & Ebdon, C. (2022). The journey of participatory budgeting: a systematic literature review and future research directions. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00208523221078938 Friedman, M. (2005). Trying hard is not enough: How to produce measurable improvements forcustomers and communities. Victoria: Trafford Publishing. National League of Cities (2022). “Smart City Development.” https://www.nlc.org/resource/smart-city-development/ Sintomer, Y., Röcke, A., & Herzberg, C. (2016). Participatory Budgeting in Europe: Democracy andpublic governance (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315599472 Ridzi, Frank, Stevens, Chantal & Wray, Lyle (Eds). (2022). Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: BestCases IX. Switzerland: Springer. eBook ISBN 978-3-031-06940-6, Print ISBN 978-3-031-06939-0. Ridzi, Frank, Stevens, Chantal & Davern, Melanie (Eds). (2020). Community Quality-of-Life Indicators:Best Cases VIII. Switzerland: Springer.10.1007/978-3-030-48182-7.

ABSTRACT. Consumer debt has been on the rise over the last two decades in South Korea and it has become a matter of major social concern. Building on the literature about the impact of financial difficulties on the quality of family relationship, this longitudinal study examines the impact of consumer debt on family conflict. Data for the analyses include 13 waves of the Korea Welfare Panel Study, which has followed a nationally representative sample from 2008 to 2020. The sample was consisted of 92,051 cases who were 18 years or older and have been married. A fixed-effect regression model was applied for multivariate analyses. The major findings are as follows: First, a higher proportion of subprime loans was associated with a higher level of family conflict while a total amount of debt was not. Second, a greater level of net value of asset was associated with a lower level of family conflict. Third, while depressive symptoms were a risk factor, life satisfaction regarding social relationships was a protective factor. The findings suggest that the quality of debt rather than the amount of debt can play an important role in terms of family conflict and that screening and stress coping programs need be considered for households with a high level of subprime loan and debt burden.

ABSTRACT. Motivation and objectives: Despite the study of economic and financial insecurity has developed constantly over the last decades, a common definition and measure have not been found yet. This is due to the multifaced nature of this phenomenon, which brings authors to consider a set of different approaches. In this work, we suggest a new version of the indicator proposed by Gallo et al. (2022) that embraced the approach suggested by Bossert et al. (2022). In this earlier approach, an indicator at the individual level is built by considering past resource flow fluctuations. Absolute pair differences of past resource levels capture the fluctuations, assigning a higher level of insecurity to cases where a reduction in resources is not followed by a recovery. Gallo et al. (2022) suggest a relative version of this indicator, considering that two individuals having the same loss in resources at the same point in time might have a different perception of it if they start from different resource levels. Considering that the perception of economic insecurity depends not only on one’s own past experience but also on the comparison with others, in this work, we propose a new inter-temporal indicator of economic insecurity, which include two components: a longitudinal one (as in Gallo at al., 2022), and a cross-sectional one which represents the individual insecurity coming from the comparison with the others in the current time. In this way, we aim to answer the need of finding a more comprehensive measure that provides an individual insecurity score by comprising different aspects of economic insecurity.

Methods and data: The proposed indicator includes two components, a longitudinal component and a cross-sectional one, combined in a weighted average. The challenge is how to carry out the comparison with the others and how to specify appropriate weights for the two components. A first proposal is to carry out the comparison with the others by comparing the individual current resource level with the median resource level, the benchmark usually considered in the definition of relative poverty indicators. Moreover, we combine the two components considering different possibilities for specifying constant weights for all individuals.

Main results: A first important result is that indicator proposed satisfies some desirable properties. It is applied to the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (SOEP) carried out annually from 2006 to 2020, using the equivalized disposable household income as the resource. Some first results on the comparison between the indicator proposed in this work and the one previously suggested by Gallo at al. (2022) show that the added cross-sectional component has the effect of mitigating the measure of insecurity on average. Other comparisons with objective and subjective indicators will be made to evaluate the reliability of the index in capturing economic insecurity.

ABSTRACT. Aim of the paper is to analyse the effect of COVID-19 on multidimensional poverty in the Italian provinces by measuring changes in household poverty levels before and during the pandemic outbreak. To capture the multidimensional nature of poverty, we consider five different dimensions: economic well-being, health condition, education, neighborhood quality and subjective well-being. The empirical application is based on micro-data from the “Aspects of daily life” survey carried out yearly by the Italian Statistical Institute (ISTAT). Here we consider the years 2019 (pre-Covid period) and 2020 (Covid period). Since data are representative only at regional (NUTS 2) level, here we provide estimates also at a finer geographical level (NUTS 3) by applying small area estimation models to the elementary indicators that compose the multidimensional poverty. We then construct a composite indicator for each of the five dimensions of multidimensional poverty, by aggregating the elementary indicators in a non-compensatory way. Finally, we obtain an overall composite indicator of multidimensional poverty for each Italian province. Our paper may contribute to enhance the knowledge of the spatial distribution of the multidimensional poverty at a finer local level in Italy and to help policy makers to address resources towards the areas where the phenomenon is strongly present. Preliminary empirical findings reveal that households in the Southern regions have suffered worse conditions in terms of multidimensional poverty over the two years considered, although with significant differences across provinces belonging to the same region.

ABSTRACT. Characteristics of locations where individuals reside may influence their subjective well-being (SWB) level. These characteristics typically differ between urban and rural areas. Nevertheless, the relationship between location characteristics and SWB is very complex, and the literature does not provide unequivocal predictions. For example, some studies find that living in large urban centres is associated with lower levels of SWB; others find the opposite. We contribute to this stream of literature by examining the relationship between a set of negative and positive aspects of built environments and SWB using two large sets of microdata (2013 and 2018 EU-SILC datasets). We first show that in most European countries is living in urban (rural) areas associated with lower (higher) levels of SWB. We next show that this relationship is moderated by built environment characteristics (pollution and crime/violence in the area, noise from neighbours). Finally, we show that this moderating effect is statistically significant in most European countries. The results contribute to the existing literature on the relationship between SWB and places where people live.

ABSTRACT. The impact of urban design on wellbeing is an important policy issue. High house prices in New Zealand and across much of the developed world mean that there is a strong focus on urban redevelopment and on making better use of urban space through greater housing density. However, increases in the density of housing have the potential to impact negatively on the wellbeing of residents if not well designed. This paper uses cost-wellbeing analysis to estimate the non-market value of green space. In contrast to more traditional applications of cost-wellbeing analysis, a measure of experienced wellbeing is used to value the impact of green space rather than an evaluative measure such as overall life satisfaction. The use of an experienced wellbeing measure allows changes in respondent wellbeing to be linked directly to their current location – and hence exposure to green space – in a way that is not possible with evaluative measures of wellbeing.

While the use of experienced wellbeing data to identify the relationship between green space and wellbeing is not new in itself, previous studies have not estimated the compensating surplus associated with green space in dollar terms. This article applies a methodology for estimating values using experienced wellbeing data outlined by Smith (2023) using data collected through the Mappiness project (MacKerron and Mourato, 2013). The impact of hosting the 2012 Olympics in London on life satisfaction and on experienced wellbeing is used to identify the relationship between reported life satisfaction and duration-weighted experienced wellbeing. This is then combined with information on the impact of income on life satisfaction to obtain the well-being equivalent income for a given change on life satisfaction. An estimate of the duration-weighted impact of a 1% increase in urban green space is taken from Mappiness data and the compensating surplus associated with this is derived.

ABSTRACT. Previous research has demonstrated that a green natural environment in residential proximity is associated with human feelings of happiness and better overall well-being. Frequent usage of green spaces in the neighborhood seems to reinforce this association. However, very few studies focus on the importance of natural environments with reference to residential relocations. The few longitudinal studies that analyse the improvement of general well-being after moving to a place with more green spaces did not analyse whether having more green played a role in the initial process of decision-making, and whether the life-course stage was relevant. However, it is well known that various life-course events, like starting cohabitation, first homeownership or childbirth, are important drivers of residential relocation. The data for the analysis comes from a survey with random selection of respondents in two German cities, Cologne and Hamburg (1st wave in 2020/21 with N ≈ 1,800 and 2nd wave in 2021/22 with N ≈ 1,000, roughly 12 months after the first participation). Theoretically, we build on the three-stage model of residential relocations, that distinguishes between considering, planning and realizing a move. Hypotheses about the importance of green neighborhoods for well-being and therefore for moving are deduced from the theory of Social Production Functions. In addition, we analyze the importance of a green residential environment in different life-course phases (early adulthood, family phase, consolidation phase, and retirement). We test whether a green residential environment matters for moving decisions, in which stage of decision-making it is important, and whether its relevance would be recognized without considering the decision-making process. We find that environmental issues, i.e. private access to open air, exposure to traffic noise at home, and residential green space usage are relevant at the very beginning of relocation decision-making processes, when people consider moving. Residential green space usage appears to be positively connected with moving considerations for all life-course phases under study, except for retired respondents. In line with expectations, the strongest effect is observed for families as nature seems to become more important for considering moving with presence of small children. However, all three environmental issues are of minor importance at the planning stage and for realizing the move, as expected. Therefore, environmental issues might be strongly underestimated in studies of residential relocations that do not draw on the longitudinal process of relocation decision-making. Moreover, the study adds to previous findings about compensating environmental stressors in big cities, by showing the importance of neighboring green spaces.

ABSTRACT. Tourism based on eco-residences (TBER) has been promoted in Iran, especially in local communities in the north of Iran. This type of tourism has stimulated the creativity of the local community and transformed natural, historical, and cultural attractions into tourism destinations and attractions. The eco-residences have been able to promote other aspects of tourism sectors as well, which in turn can aid in promoting community development and well-being. Although eco-residences provide an environment to attract tourists to destination communities, it is still unclear how this form of tourism contributes to community development and well-being. In addition, there is no study that has been done specifically on the contribution of this type of tourism to community well-being. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to evaluate the local community regarding contribution of TBER promoting development and well-being in the north of Iran. This research is based on a questionnaire, and its statistical population is local people in the north of Iran, and the available sampling method was used to collect data. To analyze the data, structural equations and SMART-PLS software were used. The results showed that with the increase of TBER, community development and well-being have been promoted among the local community. The factor of job creation and increase in local participation explain the highest percentage of the impact of TBER on the development and well-being of the local community. Also, based on survey results, the increase in the percentage of women's participation, their entrepreneurship activities and job creation in local communities were considered.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this study is to contribute to nascent research by exploring the relationship between female political empowerment, proxied by share of seats occupied by women in national parliament, and life satisfaction. We use the most recent 7th wave of World Values Survey and estimate a rich life satisfaction equation. We find that female political empowerment has significant positive link with life satisfaction in more than 70 countries. The results are robust even when we account for a rich set of socio-demographic and macroeconomic controls. This study suggests that increasing female parliamentary representation has additional positive effect on quality of life, by increasing life satisfaction.

ABSTRACT. Background: Nowadays, due to lack of supports from family, LGBT youths in Thai society have to put up with public misconception, myths, various forms of abuse, sexual and cultural violence. This study aims to analyze the role of family and their demands for improving the life quality of their LGBT children.

Methods: Funded by the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, this study was conducted on the basis of qualitative research method, which was participated by 30 parents whose children are LGBT in 8 provinces across the country, from May to December 2019. Data was collected through various tools including in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The research participants were divided into 4 groups, 5-8 people each, from 4 regions of Thailand. Field notes were later analyzed using textual analysis.

Findings: This study shows that family plays a key role in building acceptance, confidence and mental strength among their LGBT children to enble them to manage their sexual identity problems, make proper decisions on other aspects in their life, and take a healthy approach towards their transition process. It also reveals that Thai families still lack knowledge of how to raise children based on their own family contexts. They, otherwise, often compare themselves with other families, consult with other people such as teachers, neighbours, and even find information by themselves from the Internet.

Discussion: Thai government needs to continue promoting knowledge and understanding about gender diversity among people, especially parents, in accordance with current problems about children and family, as well as provide public services that are sensitive to LGBT groups and their health.

ABSTRACT. Migrant children in China are reported to be vulnerable to peer victimization and have lower life satisfaction than local peers. Family resilience, which is crucial for the optimal functioning of a family unit and the well-being of each family member, may protect migrant children from peer victimization and promote their life satisfaction. However, whether male and female children experience family resilience, peer victimization, and life satisfaction to the same extent and whether gender influences the effect of family resilience on peer victimization and life satisfaction have not been sufficiently reported. Thus, this study aimed to examine the gender differences in (1) family resilience, peer victimization, and life satisfaction, and (2) the effect of family resilience on peer victimization and life satisfaction, respectively.

To achieve the above aims, we conducted a questionnaire survey among migrant children (age = 10.49 ± 0.91) between July and August 2021 in China. A total of 452 migrant children completed the questionnaire survey, of which 196 were girls (43.35%). The present study measured four dimensions of family resilience: family communication and problem-solving, utilizing social and economic resources, maintaining a positive outlook, and family spirituality, through the Chinese Family Resilience Assessment Scale (Chiu, et al., 2019).

Independent T-tests were employed and the results showed that (1) girls reported higher scores on family resilience than boys; (2) boys reported more peer victimization than girls; and (3) there was no significant difference in life satisfaction across the two genders. Linear regressions were performed to examine the effect of family resilience on peer victimization and life satisfaction, respectively, in each gender group. After controlling for age, the results showed that: (1) concerning the effect of family resilience on peer victimization: for girls, family communication and problem-solving was negatively related to peer victimization while maintaining a positive outlook was positively related to peer victimization; for boys, none of the four dimensions of family resilience was related to peer victimization; (2) regarding life satisfaction: for both genders, family communication and problem-solving was positively associated with life satisfaction; for girls, utilizing social and economic resources was positively associated with life satisfaction.

This study demonstrated the gender differences in family resilience, peer victimization, and in the effect of family resilience on peer victimization and life satisfaction among migrant children in China. Family resilience seemed more salient for girls than for boys. Girls experienced more family resilience, which affected their peer victimization. Moreover, the study highlighted the relative importance family communication and problem-solving among the four dimensions of family resilience, as it reduced peer victimization for girls and promoted life satisfaction for both genders. For parents, school teachers, and social workers, different inventions need to be carried out to protect male and female migrant children from peer victimization, and particular focus could be put on family communication and problem-solving.

ABSTRACT. Background: Research studies showed that the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the mental health and well-being of young people. According to the ecological system theories and the positive youth development approach, positive external ecological factors, such as healthy family functioning and support from peers and community, could promote adolescents’ psychological well-being and protect them against mental health problems. However, there is limited research on the role of ecological factors in university students’ mental health under the pandemic. Against this background, the present study examined the predictive effects of external ecological factors on Hong Kong university students’ psychological well-being under the pandemic. Methods: Based on quota sampling, 978 students at a public university completed an online questionnaire between July and August 2022. In this paper, we focused on three categories of variables: students’ mental health indexed by depression, anxiety, stress, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicidal behavior, internet addiction and hopelessness; psychological well-being measured by life satisfaction and flourishing; external ecological factors assessed by positive family functioning, peer support and positive community atmosphere. Structural equation modeling was conducted to examine the predictive effects of external ecological factors on students’ mental health and psychological well-being. We expected that while external ecological factors would negatively predict negative mental health, they would positively predict measures of psychological well-being. Findings: Results showed that while positive family functioning and peer support had negative predictive effects on students’ negative mental health, they had positive predictive effects on students’ psychological well-being. While positive community atmosphere did not predict negative student mental health, it positively predicted student psychological well-being indexed by life satisfaction and flourishing. Discussion: These findings support theoretical propositions and research findings on the protective role of family functioning, and peer and community support in university students’ mental health and well-being. The present study also underscores the importance of external ecological factors in shaping mental health and well-being in young people under the pandemic. Practically, this study suggests the need to develop protective external support systems as a strategy for promoting psychological well-being of young people under the pandemic.

ABSTRACT. Background: While the COVID-19 pandemic represents a significant challenge to mental health and well-being of the general public, there is limited research in this area in university students in Hong Kong. As a highly vulnerable group under the pandemic due to different challenges encountered, university students have increased risk for mental health problems. While researchers have identified different risk factors of mental health and well-being problems of university students under the pandemic, there is inadequate research on the role of COVID-19 related stresses, such as worries related to danger and contamination of virus, as well as socio-economic consequences of the pandemic. In addition, it is important to identify the pandemic related protective factors in student well-being, particularly the protective effect of COVID-19 self-efficacy. As a positive self-belief variable, higher self-efficacy may help reduce the risk for mental health problems and enhance well-being under the pandemic. Therefore, we have conducted a study investigating the predictive effects of COVID-19 related stress and self-efficacy on mental health and well-being of university students in Hong Kong under the pandemic.

Methods: Data were collected between July and August 2022. Based on quota sampling, undergraduate students from a public university in Hong Kong were recruited and they responded to an online questionnaire. A total of 978 students completed the questionnaire. While student negative mental health was indexed by depression, anxiety, stress, post-traumatic stress, suicidal behavior, internet addiction, and hopelessness, life satisfaction and flourishing were indicators of their well-being. Besides, their COVID-19 related stresses (i.e., danger and contamination, socio-economic consequences, and checking behavior) and COVID-19 related self-efficacy were assessed. Structural equation modelling was conducted using MPLUS to examine the predictive effects of the three dimensions of COVID-19 related stress and COVID-19 related self-efficacy on student negative mental health and well-being.

Findings: Results from the structural equation modelling showed desirable model fit. For predictors of negative mental health, two stress factors (socio-economic consequences and checking behavior) positively predicted negative mental health, while COVID-19 self-efficacy negatively predicted negative mental health. For life satisfaction, danger and contamination stress negatively predicted life satisfaction while COVID-19 self-efficacy positively predicted life satisfaction. In addition, socio-economic consequences of COVID-19 negatively predicted flourishing while COVID-19 self-efficacy positively predicted flourishing.

Discussion: The present study suggests that COVID-19 related stresses are risk factors for student mental health and well-being. On the other hand, COVID-19 self-efficacy serves as a protective factor for student mental health and well-being. These findings contribute to the scientific literature on COVID-19, particularly in the Chinese context. Practically, university administrators should devise ways to help students cope with the COVID-19 related stresses and strengthen their COVID-19 related self-efficacy.

ABSTRACT. Background: As the global community is adjusting to the "post-COVID-19" era, where the "visible" economic and physical health damage of the epidemic has been relatively well-discussed, more attention should be turned to the "invisible" psychological impact of this crisis. As a vulnerable group experiencing academic stress, financial stress, peer and supervisor absence associated with distance learning, as well as the likelihood of spatial resource strife and family conflict arising from home isolation, the mental health of university students should be examined. This issue is particularly acute in Hong Kong where COVID-19 stress is mixed with the stress arising from the Social Event taking place in 2019-2020. Hence, we have conducted a study to examine how intrapersonal competence in university students is related to their mental health and well-being. Based on the Positive Youth Development (PYD) approach, we expected that while there would be a negative relationship between intrapersonal competence and negative student mental health (e.g., depression), the link between intrapersonal competence and student well-being would be a positive one under the pandemic.

Methods: A quota sampling method was employed to recruit undergraduate students (N=978) from July to August 2022. The participants responded to an online questionnaire. The questionnaire contains measures of Intrapersonal competence (indexed by beliefs of adversity, resilience, and emotional competence), negative mental health (including measures of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal behavior, internet addiction, and hopelessness), and well-being (measured by life satisfaction, flourishing). Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was performed using Mplus to examine the hypothesized relationships among these variables.

Findings: Results revealed that the proposed model showed a good fit to the data. While belief of adversity had a negative effect on negative mental health, it had a positive effect on flourishing and life satisfaction. For resilience, although it did not have a significant effect on negative mental health, it positively predicted flourishing and life satisfaction. In addition, while emotional competence negatively predicted negative mental health, it had a positive effect on flourishing.

Discussion: This study provides support for the hypothesis that nurturing young people's intrapersonal competence, particularly resilience, beliefs of adversity and emotional competence, contributes to their flourishing and life satisfaction, as well as protecting them from negative mental health. We argue that it would be helpful to nurture the intrapersonal competence of the students so that they can have more capabilities to cope with life adversities such as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, such initiatives should be carried out before the occurrence of the pandemic.

ABSTRACT. The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has changed the lives of all populations and posed significant challenges to school students worldwide. Given the lockdown and social distancing measures being enforced, schools in many places of the world had to be temporarily closed, and the traditional classroom teaching and learning had to switch online. This change of learning mode unveiled a hidden poverty issue – digital poverty – which exposed a proportion of students whose families could not provide sufficient digital resources to extreme adversity. Having difficulty in access to appropriate digital devices and stable internet would seriously hinder students’ effective learning, which further influence their psychological wellbeing. This is critical in the Hong Kong context wherein students have experienced an unexpectedly prolonged time of staying home for online learning due to school closure. Drawing upon data from a cross-sectional survey with 2264 secondary school students in Hong Kong, this study aimed to examine the association among digital poverty, students’ experiences of online learning and their psychological wellbeing. Digital poverty was assessed by the number of digital devices that students possessed at home and whether or not there was access to stable WiFi. Experiences of online learning was measured by asking the students if they agreed with four statements related to their perception of online learning, rated on six points ranging from totally disagree to totally agree. Psychological wellbeing was assessed by happiness, anxiety, stress, and depression using standardized scales. The structural equation modeling results suggested that difficulty in access to stable internet did show significant negative effects on students’ experience of online learning and their psychological wellbeing. Online learning experiences also mediated the effects of digital poverty on all four wellbeing outcomes of students. The findings called for policy responses to address the issue of digital poverty in order to ensure educational equality and promote the psychological wellbeing of students, especially in the context that online learning may become the trend of future education as an unexpected consequence of the pandemic.

ABSTRACT. For the last seven years Purdue University researchers have partnered with a community development corporation, the City of Lafayette (Indiana-USA), a neighborhood coalition, and Habitat for Humanity, to collect primary data and analyze secondary data specifically for the purposes of: 1) neighborhood revitalization, 2) affordable housing, and 3) homelessness intervention. One primary goal—of the City of Lafayette—has been to enhance resident retention and community well-being in six target neighborhoods by making data-driven decisions towards community redevelopment. One primary goal of the Purdue researchers has been to actively engage local residents in these research efforts; to facilitate participatory action research. Findings from the qualitative portion of the research suggested that local residents wanted and valued: 1) increased safety within their respective neighborhoods, 2) opportunities to connect meaningfully with their neighbors, 3) access to healthy and affordable food options, 4) opportunities to contribute to neighborhood-level decision-making processes, and 5) decreased crime throughout the city. The Purdue researchers have translated these research findings into varying neighborhood resources and assets such as a pocket park, online volunteer training for a neighborhood center, youth development programs, new neighborhood associations, neighborhood livability studies, current state of evictions studies, and non-profit services utilization evaluation. Although local residents have been instrumental in this research as both participants (subjects) and researchers, they have primarily served as secondary decision-makers—doing what principal investigators and city officials have asked them to do.

In April of 2023 the Purdue researchers will have facilitated community asset mapping sessions with residents from targeted Lafayette neighborhoods using qualitative data that they provided within this larger research project as the focus of each session. The primary purpose of hosting these sessions will be to center residents—their knowledge, skills, abilities, networks, and identified community assets—in transforming their social and material realities in ways that enhance their collective quality-of-life and community well-being. Such an effort is a better attempt at putting the residents first in the project to enhance their happiness. They have identified the key priorities mentioned above and will leverage their collective agency to address them. It will be a transition towards a people-first society.

In this session a Purdue University researcher will share the initial outcomes from this first round of community asset mapping events as well as discuss the implications of such an endeavor. The interactive element of the session will include an invitation to the audience to share the work they have done with communities within the context of community asset mapping, and a sharing of best practices in developing people-first movements within local societies.

ABSTRACT. Mega physical infrastructural developments, including road projects, take place across fast-growing Global South cities. Most of the time, they are seen as key drivers of economic development and progress. Consequently, donor agencies and countries are implementing massive investments in the road sector with the rationale of promoting economic growth. Evidence shows that these mega physical infrastructural developments have already changed periurban areas' spatial and socio-economic characteristics. In this presentation, we argue for an approach to assess their impact informed by community knowledge that considers the quality of life and well-being of the affected communities. The literature shows that these large-scale infrastructural projects have positive and negative consequences. However, it is still being determined how such projects shape and influence the patterns of residential development as well as social relations in peri-urban areas. We illustrate this approach by examining the case of two communities in Accra, Ghana. Using mixed methods, we focused on the lived experiences of affected communities. This included in-depth interviews of key informants, focus group discussions and questionnaire surveys. Using GIS, we analysed the situation before and after the expansion of the road. We found that the road expansion has led to the emergence of some residential development patterns, such as gating in the two communities and gentrification. We also found that despite that new social services were made available, this process has led to the displacement of some poor people in the communities. Finally, the road infrastructure development resulted in the decline of social integration in both communities. Asking for help, knowing one another and social interactions with other neighbourhoods were perceived to have decreased in the communities. We conclude that assessing the impact of mega physical infrastructural developments should go beyond monetary indicators, and policymakers should incorporate community knowledge from the affected communities to understand better and mitigate the negative impacts on their quality of life.

ABSTRACT. Recently, the global health crisis has made existing quality of life issues difficult to ignore in industries that heavily depend on interpersonal interaction. Individuals’ QOL has been influenced by travel restrictions, which in turn impacted the QOL of people living from tourism who faced furloughs and job loss (Kimbu et al., 2021). The importance of these impacts varies as a function of the forms of tourism and the involvement and exposure of residents to tourism. Therefore, this paper proposes to study the QOL of tourists and groups of residents and tourism workers simultaneously in given destination contexts.

Importantly, Sirgy (2019) stimulates the tourism discipline to employ and enhance QOL and well-being concepts. Although tourism depends on human interactions, the QOL of people visiting, living and working in a tourism destination remains underexplored. Both visitors’ and inhabitants’ QOL are impacted by tourism activity (Uysal et al., 2016), which provide individuals the chance to interact with one another and create opportunities for establishing and maintaining personal relationships (Chen et al., 2020), having the potential to increase tourists’ and residents’ well-being (Nawijn and Mitas, 2011). The emphasis on quality of life as an outcome variable offers a comprehensive knowledge of tourism’s contributions to enhancing the QOL of individuals embedded in the tourist system (Berbekova et al., 2022). Earlier research has established that heterogeneity exists across individuals regarding the importance of QOL domains like vacations (Dolnicar et al., 2013) and has suggested that these may differ among destination residents and tourists (Nawijn and Mitas, 2011). Yet, to our best knowledge, no such comparison exists at a destination level so far.

This research aims to answer the following questions: (1) what is the perceived QOL of tourists, community residents, and tourism workers in a given tourism destination; (2) what are the most important QOL indicators/dimensions for each of these three groups in a given tourism destination; and (3) how do each of these groups at a given destination perceive the quality of interaction, and how does this impact on their QOL. It is hypothesized that destination QOL will depend on the aggregate QOL of the three groups.

To answer these research questions, based on bottom-up spillover theory (Sirgy, 2001; 2010) a survey instrument is designed to obtain in-depth data, which can then be combined with objective QOL indicators at a destination, which has rarely been undertaken simultaneously in tourism (Uysal et al., 2016). Expectancy theory is used to give meaning to objective QOL indicators. The collected data will be analysed using multivariate statistical methods. It is expected to find specific evidence for different forms of tourism, especially recently developing ones such as nature-based tourism (Kim et al., 2015; Vroegop, forthcoming 2023). This will hopefully permit to draw some policy conclusions, because tourism needs to promote the well-being of everyone involved at the destination (Vroegop and Maggi, forthcoming 2023).

ABSTRACT. Higher education institutions have seen a substantial decrease in student motivation and engagement since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, as we move into a post-COVID era, many students remain disengaged from extra-curricular opportunities, especially those associated with university/community partnerships. Therefore, to encourage student engagement with local communities, the [academic unit] implemented the inaugural Community Innovation Challenge. The challenge was designed to inspire students at a southern U.S. university to engage with local communities mindfully as they co-design and complete a community beautification project, enhancing the quality of life for individuals within the community. Out of several viable proposals, one team was chosen for funding. This project focused specifically on enhancing the quality of life of international graduate students, creating an epicenter for community engagement in graduate student housing in a post-COVID era.

Considering project context, in the quest for higher education, many students from diverse countries around the world migrate to the [university], in the United States. Additionally, most of the graduate students come with their families, who are housed on campus, but often still find it quite challenging to interact within other communities. [title] family housing is one of the [university] apartment complexes and has provided a home to many generations of international graduate families since the 1980s. As a family housing community, it has been a desire to have better interaction and relationship with and learn the rich culture of other countries, which the housing apartment already set the stage for. In comparison to almost all other university apartments, those associated with the initiative appear to have the least interactive and recreational resources. As part of their proposal development, the students worked with community residents, housing administrators and university faculty to co-design an “International Indoor Game and Youth Engagement Space” aimed to beautify and foster communality and interaction among the international graduate student community (from over 14 different countries) and their families at the [university]. Our discussion will revolve around the comprehensive design and implementation of both the Community Innovation Challenge project as well as the student implementation of the international engagement space. Implications for how this project impacts the quality of life of residents and others at [university] will also be addressed as part of the presentation.

ABSTRACT. What explains hate crime? Since the 1930s political and social scientists have often emphasised grievance-based explanations of anti-minority violence. This work often draws on the frustration-aggression thesis which argues that anger over poor quality of life produces aggressive impulses that are directed at vulnerable targets (such as immigrants). Starting with pioneering work in the 1940s, social psychologists have extensively analysed the frustration-aggression hypothesis. But this work has traditionally relied on samples from Western democracies, focused on groups as units of analysis and has seldom examined individual-level theories against individual-level data. There are, consequently, distinct knowledge gaps in this field of research.

To adequately test the frustration-aggression thesis, it is necessary to look at whether subjective wellbeing (SWB) influences participation in hate crime. The study investigates the link between SWB and public participation in anti-immigrant violence in an African context, one of the first studies to undertake such an examination. The specific focus will be on South Africa; the country has suffered successive waves of xenophobic attacks in the last few decades. These attacks are often isolated ad hoc affairs but, in the last few years, have become better organised. This article will contribute to our understanding of how SWB may predict violent anti-minority behaviour, an understudied area in the quality of life literature.

Data from the South African Social Attitudes Survey, a large repeated nationally representative public opinion poll, is used for this study. The survey series has an average sample of approximately 3,000, with surveying typically conducted in the last quarter of each calendar year. The sample is restricted to adults (aged 16 years and older) living in private residence. SASAS questionnaires were translated into the country’s major languages for ease of interpretation and all interviews are conducted face-to-face.

The micro-level determinants of past participation in violence as well as demand for participation amongst non-participants were examined using a multinomial probit approach. To measure SWB, the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) was utilised. Developed as a cross-cultural scale of wellbeing, it measures satisfaction with the seven broad domains. To avoid the risk of omitted-variable bias, the study also assesses alternative (more mainstream) explanations. The relationship between PWI and behaviour is tested in each of the following rounds: 2015 (N=3,087), 2016 (N=3,040), 2018 (N=2,852), 2020 (N=3,210) and 2021 (N=2,984). This will allow an assessment of whether model predictors have changed over time.

Notwithstanding moderate fluctuations, self-reported past participation in xenophobic violence appears to have increased during the period 2015-2021. Multivariate analysis shows that the PWI was robustly associated with past participation in anti-immigrant violence as well as a desire for participation amongst non-participants between 2017 and 2021. The study finds empirical support for the frustration-aggression thesis, the greater the level of SWB the lower the propensity for violence. However, the PWI was not a statistically significant correlate of behaviour in the first part of the period (2015 and 2016). The paper concludes with a discussion of why this change may have occurred and then outlines new revenues for future research.

ABSTRACT. Migrants in destination countries have worse outcomes on the labour market than do natives, particularly in the likelihood of being overeducated. While low employment outcomes have negative implications for how individuals evaluate their life, or, their subjective well-being (SWB), several factors modify the SWB implications for migrants, such as availability of supporting resources and comparison with reference groups. This said, different reasons for migration associate with differences not only in the availability of resources in the destination country, but also in the importance that employment, and educationally matched employment, has for migrants’ SWB. In this article, those on work visas suffer less from overeducation than those seeking asylum, since right to residence in strictly contingent on employment. As such, this article determines the SWB implications from employment and overeducation for migrants in the United Kingdom (UK), accounting for differences caused by initial reason for migration.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the relationship between belonging, social identiy and life satisfaction of the Turkish migrants in the Netherlands. This is done by using a unique dataset (including 1006 respondents) prepared by the authors. Dependents variables of the ordered-probit/logit regressions (run for the all sample and third generation) are life satisfaction and belonging. The regression results revealed that social comparison with the natives (the Dutch) and feeling of being a Netherlander is positively correlated with belonging and life satisfaction. Belonging is positively correlated with life satisfaction whereas life satisfaction is not statistically significant in all models where belonging is dependent variable. The study also includes descriptive for different groups (generations and year since migration). All the findings suggest that more time spent in the Netherlands increases the sense of belonging, life satisfaction, sense of being Netherlander and social comparison tendencies.

ABSTRACT. In many economically advanced countries, a relevant proportion of the population migrates across national boundaries every year. For these individuals, migrating abroad is associated not only with benefits (e.g. monetary returns) but also with stress and potential pitfalls, as international migration involves comprehensive planning and profound changes in everyday life (e.g. leaving behind relevant others and material belongings, dealing with an unfamiliar culture). However, there are mainly cross-sectional studies about individuals’ international migration experiences that analyse the association between migration and quality of life, and longitudinal studies are missing. This study fills this gap and investigates shifts in subjective well-being (SWB) of internationally mobile German citizens from a longitudinal perspective.

We apply fixed effects (FE) panel regression to data of the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS) to observe actual migration events and the period immediately before and after international moves. To examine SWB over the course of migration, we draw on a sample of repeat migrants—Germans who returned to Germany shortly before the panel, and who migrated again across international borders during the panel. As counterfactuals, we focus on Germans who returned to Germany shortly before the panel and stayed.

The results provide empirical evidence that individuals’ SWB on average increases notably over the course of international migration. Before the move, we observe slight dips in SWB, followed by increases in SWB with the migration event. Although SWB slowly declines over time after migration, a SWB surplus tends to persist two years after the move. Further analyses reveal SWB increases for different subgroups, but also effect heterogeneity. For example, results indicate that increases in SWB are related to the extent to which individuals are self-determined in their migration decision, with singles experiencing the largest increase in SWB and trailing partners the smallest. Overall, the findings suggest that SWB-increases in the course of international migration are a broader phenomenon, and that they tend to be more pronounced than observed for internal migration.

ABSTRACT. Introduction Mental health has been an important public health challenge in Scotland, even before the Covid-19 pandemic. Promoting good mental health is a top priority for the Scottish Government, as set out in their Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027, which highlights the importance of prevention and early intervention. Work is an important domain in an individual’s life for creating positive and negative psychological conditions (Warr, 2007). A 2021 report by the Health and Safety Executive in the UK revealed that the rate of self-reported work-related stress, depression and anxiety has shown signs of increasing when compared to pre-pandemic levels and accounted for 50% of all work-related ill-health (HSE, 2021). On a positive side, in the UK more organisations than ever offer interventions to promote employee well-being (CIPD, 2020). Most current approaches focus on enhancing personal resources (such as resilience) and creating an environment that is more health conscious(Richardson, 2017). For example, interventions aimed at building personal resilience or mindfulness are increasingly more common and have increased in the UK from 16% in 2015 to 33% in 2020 (CIPD, 2020). While this increased interest in employee mental health is encouraging, to date there is limited evidence on the effectiveness of well-being interventions. Earlier evidence on the effectiveness of interventions aimed at enhancing personal resources is mixed. Some researchers examining mindfulness found that not all individuals benefit from its practice and others may suffer adverse effects. This includes evidence of somatic, psychological and neurological problems when practicing meditation (Sedlmeier et al. 2012). What is more, there is a concern in relation to how some of the well-being interventions are utilised by employers and individuals with little formal training in mental health. Unlike other psychological interventions in the UK (such as the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), no formal qualifications are required to deliver mindfulness- or resilience-based interventions. Some research suggests that if the person is alone or doing mindfulness in a group setting without a trained mental health clinician, this may result in unexpected distress (Lomas et al., 2016). Understanding better the potential usefulness of well-being interventions is crucial. Research questions (1) what interventions do organisations have in place to support mental health and well-being? (2) what motivates employees to participate in interventions? (3) how useful do employees consider the interventions to be in supporting mental health and well-being? Methodology The study is based on a qualitative research design and is currently in the process of conducting 32 semi-structured interviews with employees, managers, mental health champions and staff responsible for the planning and implementation of well-being interventions in three UK organisations. Primary data will be complemented with secondary data review (e.g., review of formal mental health and well-being policies and practices in the participating organisation). Contribution By taking a critical approach, the study aims to outline both positive and negative outcomes of well-being interventions. Considering perspectives of different stakeholders enables the study to have more holistic understanding of the extent to which well-being interventions are beneficial and for whom.

ABSTRACT. Habit-based behaviour change interventions have shown feasibility and benefits across a range of health areas. However, there is limited qualitative evidence available about participant experience and perceived impact following such programs, particularly in higher health risk populations. As such, this study qualitatively explored the perspectives of a mining cohort partaking in an in-person coach-led habit change program. Participants were on-site mining employees based in rural Queensland, Australia, working within a diverse range of roles at the site. Individual interviews were conducted on site and analysed thematically, with questions related to participation in program, areas of focus, and perceived impacts, included in relation to work safety and adapting to COVID-19. While the overall program was originally intended to be 12 months, due to COVID-19 and resulting lay-offs, interviews were conducted at 9 months to maximise participation. Eighteen of 41 program participants (4 female, 14 male; aged 19-62 years) consented to an interview, with the primary reason for not participating related to redundancies and therefore being unavailable. All 18 interviewees reported perceived program usefulness, with key wellbeing focus areas related to physical health and emotional regulation. Many also highlighted the group approach offered a unique opportunity to learn from others and feel a bit more connected. Common themes that arose in interviews related to the transferability of the program information and tools to a diverse range of health and wellbeing areas, including safety at work and ability to better support others with their own wellbeing. Additionally, multiple participants felt an improvement in self-control and situational awareness were key benefits of program participation, highlighting personal changes extended beyond just physical health. This study demonstrates the feasibility and broad positive impacts of a habit-based behaviour change program, focusing on providing participants with knowledge and resources to develop or change, instead of a specific behaviour to change, even at a rural mining site during COVID-19. By supporting individuals to improve self-awareness and feel empowered to change, even when delivered in a group setting, there is potential to make diverse, lasting impacts on wellbeing.

ABSTRACT. A growing number of development programs recruit and train women to become micro-distribution entrepreneurs, selling consumer goods and food products in last-mile markets. International development actors partner with multinational corporations to run these programs, as part of their contribution to poverty eradication, gender equality and decent work (Sustainable Development Goals 1, 5 and 8). While most programs are evaluated on business-level outcomes such as the sales activity and retention of sales agents and the overall profitability of the distribution model, this study investigates the possibility for such programs to contribute to greater quality of life among sales agents, as defined by the agents themselves. This study draws on original survey research with women sales agents in one such partnership in rural Nigeria to evaluate how quality of life has changed for them and in what ways, and the relative importance of factors such as increased income, access to finance, new skills, greater self-confidence and a sense of solidarity with other sales agents in driving self-reported changes in quality of life. Conclusions will be offered on the possibility for such programs to contribute to improved quality of life for rural women - and under what conditions this may occur. Conclusions will be weighed critically against the many challenges of these development programs, which include marginal and inconsistent sales revenue for the agents, the difficulty of making sales models profitable and the risks of challenging social norms that are unsupportive of women’s entrepreneurship.

ABSTRACT. This article is a theoretical discussion that seeks to describe the pillars that literature has identified as cornerstones for an organization to be positive meanwhile showing concern for its workers’ well-being. Four elements are proposed in this paper: the implementation of healthy organizational practices to contribute to the well-being (B) of employees; the (E) focus on positive leadership that involves feedback, communication, and goal setting; the presence of positive environments (A) for workers and meaningful work (T). The elements are integrated into the acronym BEAT (in Spanish). The presence of the components associated with a positive organization will generate greater well-being for workers with positive outcomes for organizations. The BEAT model allows the workers of an organization to evaluate their work, the relationship with their colleagues and leader, as well as the organization. Knowing the pillars of worker well-being within the firm will provide companies with the possibility of measuring and improving those pillars to achieve better organizational results.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, there has been a lively debate in the social sciences about inequality-induced status concerns in affluent societies. However, it is an open empirical question if the people in rich societies are in fact mainly concerned with status. Especially cultural modernization theory (e.g, Riesman, Schulze, and Inglehart) assumes that the basic dispositions in people change over time, when a certain level of abundance is reached – people then rather strive for an emotionally rewarding life than for status and (material) success. Therefore, we conceptualize experience seeking, that is aspiring an enjoyable life, alongside status seeking, that is aspiring a successful life to examine the extent and relation of these two orientations over time, their associations with macro-sociological circumstances, and their social stratification by individual-level characteristics. Based on data from the European Social Survey for 27 countries with over 350,000 respondents over the period 2002-2018, we provide a cross-national overview over the development of status seeking and experience seeking and employ regression modelling to assess the association between the dispositions and socio-economic development and income inequality and the individual-level social structuration of the dispositions. Our results show that both dispositions are widespread but experience seeking is more widespread than status seeking in most European societies – especially the more affluent and more equal societies that could be characterized as postmodern ‘experience societies’ in which people strive for an enjoying life. Only some ex-socialist countries and Italy could rather be classified as modern ‘competitive societies’ in which people strive for an economically successful life. Within societies we find evidence that men, younger people, and the highly educated value both experiences and status more.

ABSTRACT. In contrast to socio-economic status itself, striving for status has received little attention as a predictor of life satisfaction. As motivational basis of status advancement status seeking may be conducive to life satisfaction; however, it might also fuel unattainable aspirations and thus be detrimental to life satisfaction. Using data from the 5th and 6th World Value Surveys (2005-2014) for more than 100,000 respondents in more than 70 countries, this contribution investigates the relationship between two manifestations of status seeking—striving to be rich and striving to be successful—and life satisfaction. Empirically, striving for success is positively linked to life satisfaction in most countries, whereas striving to be rich is more ambivalent, increasing life satisfaction in some countries but decreasing it in others. Cross-level interactions with socio-economic development levels confirm that striving for success is equally positively linked to life satisfaction across different levels of human development. In contrast, striving to be rich correlates positively with life satisfaction in less developed countries and negatively in highly developed countries. Interestingly, the opposite pattern emerges when the spread of post-material values is used to reflect cross-national differences in cultural value climates: Striving to be rich correlates equally negative with people’s life satisfaction, regardless of the cultural value climate. However, the more widespread post-materialist values are in a given society, the less positive striving for success is for people’s life satisfaction. Within societies, the overall positive association between seeking for success and life satisfaction is more pronounced in the lower income strata. The overall negative association between seeking to be rich and life satisfaction, however, is weaker and even turns positive in the higher income strata. Systematic comparisons according to levels of human development and post-materialism reveal that these interactions are only present at higher levels of human development and postmaterialism – in more materialist societies and less developed countries, status seeking is uniformly linked to life satisfaction, independent of individual’s income strata. In two respects, our results question the generality of the popular advice derived from happiness research that it is best to generally refrain from status thinking. First, not all manifestation of status seeking are harmful to life satisfaction, e.g. striving for success. Second, the aspiration to be rich is harmful only for a specific slice of world citizens, namely for low income people in highly developed countries. In conclusion, for the greater part of the world's population status seeking could well be more positive than happiness research commonly assumes.

ABSTRACT. Shalom Schwartz proposed in 1992 a value theory, and he presented various scales to measure the values in his theory. There is a very large body of literature studying their measurement properties, consequences and also causes in many countries and settings. However, only a few studies examined the stability and change of the values in general, and in times of crisis in particular. This is unfortunate, because the issue of stability and change is central to the value theory. Our current study tries to bridge this gap. Using the GESIS Panel, a German mixed-mode (online and mail) probability-based panel population study, in which the Schwartz values are measured annually, we examine the stability and change of basic human values among adults in Germany between 2014 and 2021. Thus, we were able to investigate whether human values have been stable over time during and after the immigration wave following the humanitarian crisis in Syria, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether the “shocks” experienced during the immigration wave and the global health crisis affected basic values structures. For the analysis we employed latent growth models (lgm) to look at intra- and inter-individual differences of the value scores over the 8 time points simultaneously. Results suggested that basic values have been highly stable over time, even during the large immigration wave of asylum seekers to Germany and COVID-19 crisis. Surprisingly, this stable pattern was evident across various age and gender groups, and in particular also during the COVID crisis among people belonging to a risk group.

ABSTRACT. This presentation verifies the conceptual disparity on the reliability of subjective assessments between the Capabilities Approach (CA) in development studies and the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) in psychology, by analysing samples from wealthy and poor areas of the most prosperous cities in each of BRIC’s nations.

The reliability of subjective assessments relates to the interpretation of internalisation and adaptation which varies widely between disciplines. CA regards both as questionable in view of justice, because adaptation and internalisation alike do not reflect the distributive conditions of external goods (Sen 1987, Nussbaum 1995). In contrast, SDT clearly distinguishes internalisation from adaptation by the level of the psychological needs it specifies and views only the latter as problematic for a flourishing life (Deci & Ryan 2000). It assumes that internalisation cannot be made without satisfying external goods while adaptation can be made without them. This assumption (i.e. internalisation cannot be made in deprivation), however, needs to be tested, because the lack of external goods seems not guaranteed to be detected through the lens of psychological needs. This investigation is all the more important, given that SDT has had no empirical study targeting those who are in externally deprived conditions.

To test the assumption, this presentation analyses samples from wealthy and poor areas of the most prosperous cities in each of BRIC’s nations (1,400 samples in total). If deprived people do not satisfy the psychological needs, the distinction between internalisation and adaptation proves to be valid; otherwise, internalisation and adaptation turns out to be indistinguishable, and the distributive conditions of external goods need to be examined by means of objective assessments, apart from the level of psychological need satisfaction, for a flourishing life.

While a possible contribution of SDT to CA has been examined for operationalisation, a possible contribution of CA to SDT has yet to be investigated particularly in terms of justice.

[References] Deci, E. L. and R. M. Ryan 2000 ‘The “What” and “Why” of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior’. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4): 227-268. Nussbaum, M. (1995) ‘Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings’. In M. Nussbaum and J. Glover (eds.) Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 61-104. Sen, A. (1987) On Ethics and Economics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

ABSTRACT. The path to sustainability lies in changing our behaviour towards more environmentally friendly practices. However, greater pro-environmental commitment does not have to lead to an erosion of personal well-being. A growing body of scientific literature explores the contexts and determinants that enable high levels of pro-environmental behaviour and subjective well-being. In this research, we propose that connectedness to the environment and to other people is a facilitator of both goals. As a novelty, we use a wide range of indicators of subjective well-being (life satisfaction, emotional well-being, and satisfaction with different domains of life) and indicators of connectedness (nature contact and nature relatedness; empathy and social capital). To analyse the relationships between the variables of interest, we applied regression analyses using a representative sample (n=2259) of the adult population of Andalusia, a region in southern Spain. Overall, the regression analysis results confirm the importance of being connected to the natural and social environment, both for developing more sustainable behaviour and achieving high levels of well-being. The only exception was the empathy variable, which was negatively related to satisfaction with economic availability. Indicators of connectedness to nature and social capital stood out as being significantly and positively related to all outcome variables. Our results underline the importance of fostering social and environmental connections if we are to achieve happy and sustainable societies.

ABSTRACT. Understanding the drivers of pro-environmental behavior is crucial regarding the environmental crisis that most countries face. In our research, we attempt to answer the following questions; How do intrinsic and extrinsic motivations explain an individual’s pro-environmental behaviors? Do pro-environmental makes us happier? Are happier people more likely to make a pro-environmental effort? How do monetary rewards mediate the relationship between subjective well-being and pro-environmental effort? To do so, we conducted an experiment in two stages. In the first stage, participants were asked to come to an economics lab to answer questions about their subjective well-being and pro-environmental behavior and to participate in some games allowing us to elicit their social preferences. At the end of this first step, participants were given money and randomly assigned to four treatment groups. In the first treatment (N=50), the participant can spend a fixed amount of their money on an association that protects the environment. In a second treatment (N=50), the participants can also voluntarily participate in the second stage of the experiment. During this second stage, they participate in a pro-environmental activity of two hours. In a third treatment (N=50), we only propose them to participate to the second stage of the experiment voluntarily. In the last treatment (N=50), we propose them to participate to the second stage of the experiment in exchange of monetary rewards.

ABSTRACT. The most common notion sees sustainability as an ideal and necessary state in which society, the environment and the economy can thrive without harming each other in the present, the future and the global space.

Using data from a sample of respondents, we first validate the Italian version of the Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire developed by a Swedish research group, which aims to measure sustainability consciousness as an individual experience and awareness of sustainability. The validation process relies on the Hierarchical Confirmatory Factor Analysis model of estimation and includes both the long and short forms of the questionnaire proposed in the original study. We propose two alternative approaches to validate the short form, one based on the same subset of items as the original proposal, and another based on a data-driven strategy, resulting in a different subset of items.

We then proceed with two further steps. First, we compare a set of data collected before the pandemic with those collected during and after the pandemic outbreak. Second, we analyse how some control variables affect individual sustainability consciousness and find an interesting relationship between individual well-being and sustainability consciousness.

The Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire is a useful tool for researchers to assess how aware and responsible a national or local population is towards such an important and urgent global goal, and for policymakers to understand which variables they need to act on to improve citizens' sustainability consciousness.

ABSTRACT. The main approaches for computing very long-term discount rates – revealed and stated preferences – have limitations. We overcome previous shortcomings using derived preferences, i.e. we retrieve information on very long-term time preferences from happiness data and people’s expectations about the living conditions of future generations. We account for possible endogeneity between expectations about the future and current well-being using 2SLS. We find that negative (positive) expectations about future generations have a very large negative (positive) impact on subjective well-being. This finding suggests that the very long-term discount rate is lower than implied by most traditional economic analyses.

ABSTRACT. Background: The study provides a comprehensive analysis of trends of global scientific research, comparing pre-coronavirus disease (COVID 19) and during COVID-19 research in happiness and satisfaction, from 2014 up to 2021. Methods: The study period of the current research was divided into two phases, before the COVID-19 pandemic (1998 documents) and during COVID-19 (2020 until December 18, 2021). The Scopus database was comprehensively searched on relevant publications on Happiness and Satisfaction. Only articles published in English were retrieved. Bibliometric indicators were analyzed using Bibliometrix, an R package, and VOSviewer. Var1.6.6. Bibliometric indicators include the year of publications, authors, region, subject areas, countries, institutions, journals, country collaboration. Authorship productivity was presented in the final analysis. Results: A total of 3069 documents were extracted from Scopus. Overall, articles retrieved were written by 5220 authors before COVID19 (2014-2019) and 3520 authors during COVID-19 (2020-2022), published in 2593 journals, with 83 counties represented before COVID-19 and 84 during COVID-19, and 21.66 average citations per document before COVID-19 and 30.4 average citations per document during COVID-19. Journal of Happiness Studies led in the number of articles produced. University of California was the most productive institution both before (number of publications [NP] = 42) and during (NP = 19) the COVID-19 pandemic. The US was the most productive country on multiple metrices; firstly, based on the most productive country both before (NP = 341) and during the pandemic (NP = 145), and secondly, based on the multiple country publications metric both before (NP = 34) and during the pandemic (NP = 34). Conclusions: This bibliometric study demonstrates that the COVID-19 has not significantly affected the productivity of happiness and satisfaction researchers; however, there are subtle changes in thematic evolution that will probably inform the direction of happiness research in the coming decade.

ABSTRACT. Happiness is a key emotional construct that is synonymous with life satisfaction or subjective well-being. Multiple studies have been performed internationally that have established happiness as being influenced by multiple factors. Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) has conducted a series of surveys on happiness among its students based on a happiness survey developed at the university in 2018. This study is a retrospective analysis of the relationship between sociodemographic factors, happiness factors, and selected teaching and learning factors associated with happiness, with 7020 respondents over the course of two calendar years. Upon chi-square tests examining the relation between overall happiness and sociodemographic variables, gender, religion, and field of study were significantly associated with overall happiness. A binary logistic regression was performed to ascertain the effects of selected factors that related to campus, hostel, teaching & learning, staff for both academic and administration or support on male and female students’ overall happiness. Logistic regression models for male and female students were statistically significant; the model explained 19.4% (and correctly classified 85.1% of cases) and 10.3% (and correctly classified 86.5% of cases) of the variance in overall happiness respectively. A conducive environment and safety were significant factors for both genders, while availability of recreational and extra co-curriculum activities, and personality of lecturers and support staff were significant factors for male students. This study underscores the importance of understanding organisational and communication factors that drive higher levels of happiness in undergraduates and suggests potential factors for intervention.

ABSTRACT. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for 15 to 29-year-olds with 79% of suicides occurring in low to middle-income countries. Recently, there have been reports of an increase in Malaysian suicide rates during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Thus, it is imperative for us to better understand the possible mechanisms behind this phenomenon in relation to COVID-19 stress. This study addresses this gap by first, examining perfectionism, hopelessness, self-stigma, and COVID-19-related stress in relation to suicidality in Malaysia. Then, examining COVID-19 stress as a moderating factor between these risk factors and suicidality. A total of 596 Malaysian youths between 18 and 40 years old completed an online survey comprising of the Short Almost Perfect Scale (SAPS), Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS), Self-Stigma of Seeking Help Scale (SSOHS), Perceived Stress Scale modified for COVID-19 (PSS-10-C), and the Yatt Suicide Attitude Scale (YSAS). Results indicated a significant difference between levels of suicidality in age groups 18-24 compared to age groups 25-30 and 31-40. Additionally, there was a significant relationship between perfectionism, hopelessness, self-stigma, COVID-19 stress, and suicidality. Multiple regression analysis indicated maladaptive perfectionism, hopelessness, and COVID-19 stress to be significant predictors of suicide ideation and suicide attempts. Moderation analysis found COVID-19 stress to be a significant moderator in the individual relationships between perfectionism, hopelessness, and self-stigma with suicide attempts. The implications of these suicide risk factors as a potential target mechanism for further research and clinical work in suicide prevention and intervention in Malaysia during the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Trust is an important correlate of compliance with COVID-19 containment policies. This conclusion hinges on two assumptions: first, that compliance does not change over time, and second, that mobility or self-reported measures are good proxies for compliance. We introduce a time-varying measure of compliance to study the relationship between compliance and trust in others and institutions over the period from March 2020 to January 2021 in ten mostly European countries. We calculate a time-varying measure of compliance as the association between containment policies and people's mobility behavior. Additionally, we develop measures of trust in others and national institutions by applying emotion analysis to Twitter data. Results from various panel estimation techniques demonstrate that compliance changes over time and that increasing (decreasing) trust in others predicts increasing (decreasing) compliance. This evidence indicates compliance should not be taken for granted, and confirms the importance of cultivating trust in others.

ABSTRACT. Digital services for strengthening well-being are in great demand from citizens and service providers. There are many services available, but only a small number of them are based on scientific research. At the beginning of 2021, a digital self-assessment of the life situation was opened in Finland for young people aged 15-25. The site was based on pre-study and after two years of use it is necessary to study the experiences of young people. The self-assessment is based on the 3X10D measure. Based on self-assessment, the young person receives feedback from professionals on his/her life situation, and suggestions for virtual support services and local services in his/her municipality of residence. Over the last two years, 100,000 visitors have visited the site. The functionality of the website will be assessed by means of three materials. First, a nationally representative survey data has been collected using 3X10D and young people were asked for their emotional status during the survey. Secondly, Zekki collects qualitative information about young people's life situations through a user survey. Thirdly, Zekki analytics enables to explore what kind of services young people are interested in in different life situations. The presentation describes the results of three materials.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of the study is to describe the results of satisfaction surveys about the use of two applications (apps) to promote well-being in students of the Tecmilenio University. The first app, Healty Minds Programme (HMP), was developed by a team of mindfulness specialists from the University of Madison-Wisconsin, including Dr. Richard Davidson, and aims to train four skills associated with subjective well-being: attention, connection with others, insight and purpose. The second application, Habits.AI, is aimed at physical well-being and promotes healthy habits of eating, resting, physical activity and personal relationships. To explore the opinions of HMP users, a text analysis is performed. For Habits.AI, the response percentages are presented on a Likert scale. The results indicate that users of both apps expressed favorable opinions of their experience. Some noted that practicing meditation helps them fall asleep and become more aware of their actions. In addition, more than 70% of the respondents considered that Habits.AI contributed to improve their well-being.

ABSTRACT. In the past couple of years, in various countries, a lot of effort has been put into depicting the immediate effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on subjective well-being. In this paper however the focus is more on the long term and comparative perspective.

We combine individual level data on general life satisfaction from repeated Eurobarometer Surveys (1973-2022) in 8 European countries with country-specific macro-level time series such as unemployment rate and change in gdp per capita. By applying Multilevel Hierarchical Age Period Cohort regression on the combined data, we first estimate the net trend, life cycle and cohort effects for each country separately. With each of the three temporal dimensions considered (trend, birth cohort and life cycle), we then test different economical and/or sociological hypotheses. In addition, our research design allows to put the effect of the Covid-19 crisis into perspective, both internationally and in the long term.

Based on our first results, we find that in Belgium (Flanders), the trend fluctuations are stronger than the life-cycle effects and there are hardly any generation effects. In other countries, by contrast, there are few or no trend fluctuations, but rather signs of a generational change. Overall, International heterogeneity is particularly large, and these international differences are stronger than the temporal ones.

ABSTRACT. Longitudinal studies spanning from adolescence to middle adulthood are rare. With the LifE Study (Fend et al., 2012) we are able to examine the long-term effects of a broad variety of potential predictors from age 12 on life satisfaction at age 45 for the cohort of 1600 Germans born in 1987. Moreover, the use of path modelling allows us to disentangle important mediators in adolescence and in adulthood. In the present paper I will give a short overview on some findings of my dissertation. Using path analysis I am able not only to examine whether adolescent factors do have long-term effects on life satisfaction at age 45, but also to show through what mediators long-term predictors exert their effects in adolescence and in adulthood. That procedure allows me to gather more information than ordinary stepwise multiple regressions. The analysis shows long-term negative influence from adolescence on life satisfaction at age 45 for the father’s ISEI (only for women), for weight, for depression (only for women) and for school achievement (only for women). Long-term positive influence from adolescence can be found for achievement motivation, for deviant behavior (only for men), for self-esteem, for family satisfaction (only for women), for health satisfaction and for social integration. Path analysis shows for example that the negative influence of school achievement on women’s life satisfaction is driven by low subjective social integration at age 45, whereas economic standards at age 45 seem to counteract in a positive manner.

ABSTRACT. There is a well-documented association between personality traits – especially extraversion and neuroticism – and measures of subjective wellbeing. Meta analytical research found correlations between traits and SWB can be up to 0.5. These estimates are predominantly based on cross-sectional analysis and until today studies often take personality as a stable factor determined in young age remaining virtually unchanged for the rest of life. In contrast to this, recent developments in personality research suggest systematic changes of personality traits over the whole life course and additionally significant shifts in trait magnitudes triggered by major life events. However, the direct relationship between changes in personality traits and SWB has rarely been addressed yet. Utilizing data of the German Socioeconomic Panel the present study addresses two major issues: first, the connection of within-person-change of the Big-Five-Personality traits and SWB is analysed (mainly) by employing fixed effects regressions. Second, group differences – especially focussing on differences between generations – in the effect of personality on SWB over the life course are evaluated using growth-curve-panel-models. Significant effects of intra-personal trait change on intra-personal changes in life satisfaction as well as significant generational differences are confirmed by the data. Eventually, the study tries to give some substantial ideas of the magnitude of the estimated change(-abilities).

ABSTRACT. Purpose: In the journey toward well-being, materialism—a pervasive value that extensively permeates contemporary societies under the engine of capitalism—has faced crossroads with both positive and negative effects. The current study aimed to reconcile the contrasting evidence between materialism and well-being by probing for individual heterogeneity contingent on sense of mastery and social relations.

Methods: Using sophisticated structural equation models, two independent population-based samples were used to demystify the main and moderating effects on well-being. We preliminarily estimated the moderating role of sense of mastery and social relations in the association between materialism and mental well-being leveraging sample A (exploratory; N = 17402), and subsequently replicated and confirmed those findings using an independent sample B (confirmatory; N = 17456).

Results: The negative association between materialism and mental well-being was exhibited for those reporting lower mastery (but not for those reporting higher mastery) across two separate population-based samples. This significant two-way interaction indicated that high mastery might buffer against this commonly assumed negative association between materialism and well-being. Additionally, the inspection of the three-way interaction across two samples demonstrated that the buffering role of high mastery became pronounced for those reporting poor social relations, as the association between materialism and well-being turned out to be significantly positive in such scenarios.

Conclusion: The controversial associations between materialism and well-being might be contingent on individual heterogeneity in sense of mastery and social relations. In the approach to well-being, one seemingly counterintuitive takeaway is that materialistic individuals should maintain realistic expectations (high mastery) and insulate from the social comparison (poor social relations).

ABSTRACT. Research has demonstrated a negative relationship between aspirations and subjective well-being (SWB). In line with the literature on aspirational biases, we test a hypothesis that individuals who experience an aspirational gap enjoy lower levels of SWB than other individuals. The theory predicts that a lower level of SWB results from negative affect due to aspiring above the current socio-economic level that the individual occupies. To test these predictions, we utilise EU-SILC 2018 microdata. We operationalise aspirations as income aspirations proxied by the minimum income question and SWB by the life satisfaction question. Using a POLS regression, we show that the aspirational gap is negatively associated with SWB. We further examine negative affect (operationalised by feeling downhearted or depressed, down in the dumps, and being very nervous) as a moderator in this relationship. We show that this moderating effect is statistically significant in most EU countries. The results contribute to the existing literature on the determinants of SWB by exploring the effects of the frustration caused by aspirations set too high.

ABSTRACT. Inequality in modern societies, thus also in the Netherlands, is complex. There are disparities in income, wealth, education and labor market position. But post-industrial inequality is based on more than economic resources. Following other scholars, we adopt a capital approach and, next to economic capital, we distinguish social-, cultural- and person-capital (health and attractiveness). Based on theoretical insights we compiled indicators and used surveys to collect data on all forms of capital, which were not already available in register-data. Based on these data we find that disparities in resources, and different combinations of them, lead to seven social classes in the Netherlands. We also find that the inequality is considerable and persistent in time. Moreover: the structural differences in resources are accompanied by differences in the views of people on their own lives, society and politics. Government should pay attention to these differences. For the above mentioned reasons, but also because of they can possibly have an effect on social cohesion, trust and the legitimacy of government (policies). Of course people can invest themselves in the resources they have, but presumably that is insufficient to reduce the structural inequalities. Government can act in three directions: complement deficits in resources, improve institutional and organizational structures and break through the linkage between differences in resources and the views people have.

ABSTRACT. Over the past thirty years, public policy in Rome has failed to effectively address a rising level of socio-economic inequality. Indicators such as level of education or number of household members appear to be geographically concentrated and sensitive to the distance from the city centre. The hypothesis that socio-spatial inequalities strongly influence economic performance and foster political instability has been subject to numerous empirical investigations. Nevertheless, studies of specific urban contexts are not common. The absence of empirical applications at this scale is probably due to the fact that variables used for analysing the economic and social performance of regions are difficult to quantify or inapplicable at the micro level. The purpose of this paper is to examine the spatial distribution of socioeconomic inequalities in the municipal territory of Rome and to explore the conditions that account for them. The paper will analyse the spatial distribution of urban quality indicators and socio-economic profiles with data from different sources, aggregated at the neighbourhood level.

ABSTRACT. While Hong Kong is an urban international financial center with high GDP per capita, it has been criticized as a city with inequalities in many areas, especially economic and housing inequalities. In this paper, based on an integration of concepts on social inequalities, we briefly review political, cultural, and opportunity inequalities. The review suggests that although inequalities in these areas are not very serious, there is room for improvement. We then conduct an in-depth examination of economic and housing inequalities in Hong Kong. We found that income inequality has been worsening since the 1980s, resulting in roughly one-fifth of the Hong Kong people living in poverty. In particular, it is progressively harder for young people to have upward social mobility. Besides, wealth inequalities are serious in Hong Kong. Regarding housing inequality, there are disturbing phenomena, including small living spaces, such as sub-divided flats and “cage homes”. Low housing affordability and long waiting queue for public housing are also perpetual housing issues faced by the people of Hong Kong since 1997. The contributing factors and consequences of economic and housing inequalities on human development and the possible remedies are discussed.

ABSTRACT. The supposed book chapter addresses trends in urban inequalities in Germany in economic, social, and regional arrangements over the last three decades. The paper has four blocks – Conception, Measurement, Results, and Discussion. Block {A} – Conception – provides [1] a brief retrospective introduction to urban developments in Germany in the light of political backgrounds (resulting from WW-II and German Unification in 1990). Section [2] provides several definitions to capture the urban space – either in contrast to rural regions, as cities, or as metropolitan regions – up to small area indicators [street-level] including residential milieus. We differentiate inequalities by subgroups as within-inequalities and diversities. Multidimensional applications capture tensions in deprivations and well-being according to several dimensions – economics [income, wealth] | housing | education | health | swb [life and domain satisfaction] | labour | regional characteristics [GDP/pc unemp-rate]. Block {B} – Measurement – provides more detailed information on the measurement framework, the database, and the indicators. Section [3] recalls briefly standard inequality measures [Gini, Entropy, Palma and quantile ratios]. We apply extended Gini-based measures to differentiate inequalities and diversity issues. Multidimensional inequalities are considered according to Maasoumi. The multidimensional poverty framework according to Alkire/Foster – is also applied here to the spheres of richness and wealth. These multidimensional well-being applications are further extended using an integrated counting-based fuzzy approach – to capture also degrees of deprivations and degrees of capabilities for any indicator applied to the urban space. Section [4] describes the database – the German Socio-Economic Panel study – a longitudinal household survey with annual individual interviews of all (adult) household members since 1984 (West-Germany) and since 1990 also for East-Germany – covering such the very beginning of east-german transformation. This section provides also detailed information on indicators and their allocation to dimensions – as well as thresholds to specify poverty and wealth lines including upper and lower limits for extended fuzzy-applications – for each indicator. Block {C} – Results – monitors at first in section [5] overall trends in urban inequalities and diversities in Germany – at the background of global and national developments. We zoom further into more differentiated views of urban developments – in contrast to rural shifts using alternative urban specifications. We regard therefore inequality and diversity trends for economic and subjective well-being in greater details. And we offer results on multidimensional decompositions according to urban deprivation and well-being profiles – considering also their fuzzy-based extensions. Section [6] accomplishes the trends and decompositions by in depth views on urban residential milieus as well as socio-demographic and socio-economic differentiations with special attention to age profiles and life-cycle aspects. Block {D} – Discussion – summarizes the conceptual and methodological specifications, highlights empirical findings, and opens up for discussion on further research.

References: Aaberge et al. (2015), Alkire et al. (2015), Atkinson (2019), Krause (2016, 2019).

ABSTRACT. Background: Loneliness and social isolation are considered urgent public health concerns, associated with myriad negative physical and mental health outcomes. A critical step towards tackling these problems is to know their most effective remedies. Current knowledge regarding interventions for reducing loneliness and social isolation is conflicting and high-quality evidence is missing or dispersed.

Objectives: With this umbrella overview, we will explore and synthesize methodological quality and findings of existing systematic reviews on the alleviation of loneliness and/or social isolation.

Methods: We searched seven databases to identify systematic reviews published since 2017. Methodological quality of the included systematic reviews was assessed using AMSTAR2.

Findings: The overview includes 26 systematic reviews (SRs) of critically low to moderate quality. About half (12/26) of the SRs included meta-analyses; the remaining used narrative synthesis. Most reviews focused on older adults (19/26) and were more likely to report on loneliness (23/26) than social isolation (12/26). Interventions can be broadly categorized as social (social network, social support), psychological (therapy, social skills training, psychoeducation), and digital (computer use, online support, etc.). Although many reviews included studies of participants who were not lonely, they focus on treatment and not prevention. The reviews included interventions targeting young people (3/26), all ages (10/26), or older adults (13/26). In general, meta-analyses show evidence of effect whereas narrative analyses (and primary studies) are mixed or show no evidence of effect. The interventions showing the most promise are social interventions for social isolation and psychological interventions for loneliness. Effects are highly heterogenous and low to moderate in size. Digital and other interventions show mixed or non-significant effects. Conclusion: We identified and summarized information from 26 systematic reviews of low or moderate methodological quality showing that specific interventions show slight or moderate efficacy for reducing social isolation or loneliness. However, gaps still exist posing key barriers towards successfully addressing social disconnection in public and public health initiatives. Overall quality of evidence was very low. Better quality systematic reviews and primary studies is critical to inform interventions and policies. Critically, we still need more research understanding the causes and remedies for the increase in loneliness among youth and young adults.

ABSTRACT. Background: Young people with a history of foster care are at risk for a host of adverse outcomes. However, many children who experience significant childhood adversity demonstrate resilience by young adulthood. One mechanism by which well-being may be achieved is through a turning point, defined as a ‘‘subjective account of lived experience which involves some degree of change in situation, behaviour, or meaning’’ (Clausen, 1995). This study sought to answer two key questions: (1) What do turning points look like for young adults with foster care experience? (2) Does having a turning point buffer the impact of early adversity on young adult well-being?

Method: Participants included 173 racially/ethnically diverse young people who were interviewed in pre-adolescence (at ages 9-11) and again in young adulthood (ages 18-22). At baseline, all children were in foster care. By young adulthood, 88% had lived with relatives, 76% had lived in non-relative foster care, 52% had lived in congregate care, 45% had reunified with birth families, and 27% had experienced adoption (non-exclusive categories). A published measure of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) indexed baseline adversity. At both interview timepoints, young people were asked to complete a measure of Life Satisfaction (LS). In young adulthood, participants were asked the following open-ended question: Thinking back across your entire life and all the experiences you’ve had (either related to foster care or not), have you ever experienced a major turning point that changed the way you thought about something or how you behaved? If yes, what was the turning point? Two raters independently, and then via consensus, coded each narrative’s content as belonging to each of 20 categories of events/attitudes/behaviors.

Results: One-fifth of participants stated that they did not have a turning point (TP). Having a TP was unrelated to gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, living situation history, or type of maltreatment. Of those with a TP, 89% reported just one TP with an average age of 16 at the TP. The most frequent TP categories were moment of maturation/realization, followed by engagement in positive behaviors/attitudes or stopping negative behaviors/attitudes. A little less than half endorsed a negative or positive event as the TP. A multiple regression predicting young adult LS found a significant interaction between having a TP and ACEs, over and above baseline LS and gender. For those with a TP, there was no association between ACEs and LS but for those without a TP there was a negative association between ACEs and LS.

Conclusions and Implications: For young adults with a history of foster care, having a TP in adolescence buffered the impact of early adversity on young adult well-being. The nature of the TPs varied, but having any TP seemed to lead to meaning making, realizations and hopefulness that may serve as protective factors while navigating the transition to adulthood. Practice implications will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. “Cultural Perspectives on Youth Gun Violence” is a U.S. based undergraduate research project facilitated by [academic unit] in collaboration with ONE [city] and Cities United. Prompted by a significant rise in gun violence within [city] over the past five years, the overall issue created a felt need for collaborative, community-wide intervention efforts. In order to enhance collaborative efforts, [academic unit] partnered with ONE [city] to develop and publish a city-wide strategic plan focusing specifically on youth and young adult gun violence. This plan highlighted key strategies intended to build community solidarity and agency in order to address youth gun violence, ultimately leading to improved quality of life for that community. An especially salient recommendation from the strategic plan was the need for voice from the community’s most marginalized citizens – who are often those most impacted by gun violence. Therefore, to gain deeper insight into minority generational perspectives on youth gun violence, undergraduate researchers implemented a participatory action research project. Specifically, stratified purposive sampling methods were utilized to identify appropriate study participants; once participants were identified, undergraduate researchers conducted personal interviews throughout the city. The stratified sample included members of African American, Latino and Hispanic, and LGBTQ+ communities respectively. Generational categories included Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennial and Gen Z. Semi-structured interviews focused on four constructs: 1) Perceptions of demographics and motivations of the youth committing gun violence; 2) Perceptions of social entities responsible to address gun violence; 3) Personal experience with gun violence; and 4) Knowledge of resources associated with gun violence. Results indicated perceptional discrepancies between cultural groups regarding gun violence perpetrators, as well as discrepancies on whose responsibility it is to address the issue. Additionally, there were similarities across generational categories on how they viewed gun violence. As part of the presentation, faculty and student researchers will discuss how findings are currently guiding programming, marketing and educational strategies for community organizations aligning with the city-wide strategic plan. Ultimately, our research strengthens ONE [city] community-centered approach to equitably protect and support the [city]’s community by listening to the expressed beliefs and needs of marginalized minority communities in an effort to further enhance their quality of life.

ABSTRACT. This article discusses the common finding of a midlife low in human wellbeing, before moving on to look at explanations for the phenomenon of such a wellbeing slump in midlife (the so-called midlife crisis). The explanations initially involve uncovering systematic differences in wellbeing in midlife for different groups (e.g. marital status; employment contract; work environment; education) and assesses ideas and notions from psychology and psychotherapy with popular datasets.

ABSTRACT. In 2017, the Taiwan government implemented the “Saving Accounts for Future Education and Development of Children and Youth,” which establishes a personal saving account for every child from low-income families and provides monthly deposits until the child turns eighteen. Based on the asset-building theory, this policy provides 1:1 matched funds as an incentive to parents of new born children living in low-income households. It is hoped that this account can help children from poor families emerge from poverty by enabling investments in higher education. Though all low-income families with children born after 2017 are eligible to open an account, participation is voluntary. Up to 2021, about 46% of eligible children opened an account, but most did not save regularly. According to the policy, the government needs to collect panel data for randomly selected program participants every four years, in order to evaluate how this policy works.   This study randomly sampled 878 parents or legal guardians of children who opened accounts for their children, and 137 for those who did not open the account in the first year when the policy was implemented. Face to face interviews were done by social workers to collect data regarding their family economic conditions, employment status, parenting attitudes, educational expectation for their children, and the developmental conditions of their children. Analyses of data found that in terms of economic difficulties, employment status, parenting stress, parental expectation for their children, and parent-child relationships, no significant group differences were found between the account holders and non-holders. However, parents who have not yet opened an account experienced higher levels of depressive mood and poorer self-concept. Most of all, those who have not yet opened the account reported perceived poorer economic conditions than those who have already opened an account. Since data in this study was collected in the first year of this program, the effect of participation might not be able to emerge. As the second wave of data will be collected in 2023, we should be able to examine whether participation in this program cannot only help to build monetary assets, but enhance the well-being of these families and their children.

ABSTRACT. The role of migration in development is heavily promoted by the Philippine government, as seen in its various policies and programs that support migrants and recognize their contributions to the well-being of Filipinos in the country and abroad. This qualitative research sought to understand how development policies promote well-being through the institutionalized award system called the “Presidential Awards for Filipino Individuals and Organizations Overseas.” Publicly available biennial books of awardees that span 30 years (1991-2021) were thematically analyzed. Results reveal that the Philippine government capitalized on the transnational ties of the Filipino diaspora with their homeland based on a perceived shared sense of history, identity, and belonging. Further, the government highlighted the volunteerism and philanthropic activities of Filipinos overseas, bestowing upon them three identities. First, they are heroes/heroines who sacrificed being away from their homeland and loved ones, yet they continue to help uplift Filipinos in various ways. Second, they are role models who showed the world the talents and capabilities of Filipinos, making them worthy of emulation, especially by Filipino youth. Lastly, they are diplomats who mediate on issues of Filipinos between their host country and the Philippines, making them instrumental in maintaining good ties between nations. This award system is a testament to the confidence of the Philippine government in migrants as development agents. As such, policies in the Philippines are very proactive in channeling migration in the development path.

ABSTRACT. Almirante Reis Avenue is one of the most well-known avenues in Lisbon since it crosses most of the city and connects higher areas of the city to downtown. In the last years, this street has become a focus of political and community discussion, particularly since the reduction of pedestrian and car lanes on behalf of the introduction of bicycle lanes. Given the ongoing debate on how to improve the quality of life in this public space, we collected exploratory questionnaire data from 140 valid random users walking on this avenue, within a case-study approach, and following the perspective of “post-occupancy evaluation” (Churchman, 2002). The key goals of our applied research study were to: (1) identify the main factors contributing to the quality of life on this place; (2) evaluate the user’s satisfaction with the key characteristics of the place and with the recently introduced changes (bicycle lanes); and (3) outline implications for public-policy for quality-of-place improvement. Each participant was inquired about their agreement on 30 Likert-type questions, ranging from (1) completely disagree to (5) completely agree. The questionnaire was developed on the base of quality-of-life literature and framed within Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory (Sheikh & van Ameijde, 2022), specifically evaluating basic needs satisfaction (e.g., physical mobility – incoming and outgoing, quality of light, crowding level, level of noise and pollution), and social and higher-level needs satisfaction (e.g., perceived place prestige/status, self-connection to the place, tolerance, and diversity of lifestyles). We then run comparative analyses between residents and non-residents in the area, between the upper and lower part of the avenue and between different age groups. The main results showed that residents significantly rated the place as having good mobility (outgoing) and perceived more that bicycle lanes were harming the car and public transportation than non-residents. Non-residents significantly perceived better illumination levels and more “fresh air” than residents (p<0.05). Statistically comparing the respondents from the upper with those of the lower part of the avenue, we found that respondents in the upper part significantly evaluated the place as having better illumination, as contributing positively to their well-being, as having green zones and as having more fluid public transportation transit than respondents in the lower part of the avenue (p<0.05). In additional analyses, we regressed the items evaluating the quality of place in the criterion item asking “This place contributes to my well-being”. We found that place prestige/status (p<0.010), non-pollution of the place (p<0.13), tolerance to difference (p<0.042), and positive connection to the place (p<0.002) were the significant predictors contributing to users well-being. Overall, our results allowed to outline public-policy pointers to improve the livability and quality of place of that important avenue, including communication guidelines targeted at specific groups of users (residents vs. nonresidents, upper vs. lower part of the avenue, younger vs. older users). We discuss each of these proposals in the light of previous research.

ABSTRACT. This paper uncovers the long-term consequences of warfare on resilience in health satisfaction. I look at a quasi-experiment setting, using variation in WWII destruction in West German cities and variation in exposure to the war. I use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data and match it with the level of destruction in rubble per cubic meter per capita in the municipality of birth from the German Municipality Statistical Yearbook of 1949. This allows to apply a difference-in-differences specification interacting a variable that equals one if the individual experienced the war, and 0 if she was born after the war, with the continuos variable of rubble per capita at the end of WWII. The main sample consists of 2,542 individuals. The results show that those who experienced the war in more destroyed cities are more resilient as adults, compared to those who did not experience the war. The effect is small but significant. Cohort analysis show that this outcome is driven by those who were between the age of twenty-five and nine at the start of the war. I propose two channels that might explain this result: post-traumatic growth for the older cohort (the individual becomes desensitized to future shocks) and war destruction of institutions during key years for the younger cohort, such as Early Childhood Education or Primary Education. The findings are robust to sample selection, falsification tests and validity checks such as possible composition bias due to fertility decisions, infant mortality, mortality in adulthood and migration.

ABSTRACT. Background: Literature has shown that the wellbeing of youth living with socioeconomic disadvantages are being disproportionately affected by the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Previous research provides substantial evidence on the protective role of family resilience in promoting positive development of this population. However, the relationship between family resilience and wellbeing among Chinese rural-to-urban migrant children, especially during the pandemic, has not been addressed. This study examined the association between family resilience and life satisfaction of rural-to-urban migrant children in China during the pandemic, as well as the mediating role of positive youth development in this relationship.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted one year after the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak in China. A total of 465 rural-to-urban migrant children (201 girls and 257 boys; age = 10.49 ± .92) were recruited from a primary school exclusively serving migrant children in Hangzhou, China. Participants completed the short-form Family Resilience Scale, the Chinese Positive Youth Development Scale, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale in classroom settings.

Results: It was revealed that 1) after controlling for the effects of gender, age, and years of living in Hangzhou, family communication and problem-solving (FCPS) and utilizing social and economic resources (USER) were positively associated with participants’ life satisfaction; 2) positive youth development attributes, clear and positive identity, bonding, and beliefs in the future, partially mediated the associations between family resilience components and life satisfaction.

Conclusion: Our findings support the protective role of family resilience during the pandemic on the subjective wellbeing of disadvantaged children and offer a better understanding about the mechanism underlying the relationship. For underprivileged families, trainings on skills for family communication and problem solving, and utilizing social and economic resources can be provided to improve the wellbeing of their children.

ABSTRACT. The research paper aims to identify how ‘Digital Language Brokering’ enhanced the quality of life of older adults in India by the bridging of intergenerational support and technology interface to overcome the pandemic induced ‘virtual shock’. Government of India launched the visionary initiative of Digital India campaign in 2015 to make India digitally empowered. Three components are core to the initiatives – viz: the development of secure and stable digital infrastructure, delivering government services digitally, and universal digital literacy. The campaign aimed to ensure availability of government’s services to all its citizens though digital interface. However, ‘ the new normal’ under the pandemic situation introduced a ‘virtual shock’ to older adults, not only due to the shift of government services entirely into the digital mode, but also due to Reverse quarantine that abruptly transformed the nature of social gatherings, rituals, ceremonies, and festivals, performance of daily purchases, livelihood opportunities, social care and entertainments into the virtual mode. Digital divide posed a serious challenge for the older people. The research used mixed methodology and followed descriptive research design. Quantitative data were collected form 279 older adults in Kerala through an interview schedule and a Google form. Qualitative data were collected by using observation, in-depth interviewing, case study and narrative methods. Bourdieu’s theory of Habitus was used to explain the dynamics of digital world for older adults. Research concluded that ‘Digital Language Brokering’ is an effective tool to impart digital skills to older adults, bridge generation gap, reduce loneliness, enhance life satisfaction and enjoy life purpose. Digital skills enrich all the four species capitals and are capable of developing as another significant Species Capital in the new normal. Accessible, affordable and exclusive motivation packages targeting older adult citizens are needs of the hour to reduce the digital divide in this population sector.

ABSTRACT. This longitudinal study explores the till now untested role of global meaning violation in the longitudinal wellbeing, depression, and anxiety outcomes during the pandemic. Further, the study explores the potential for meaning making processes to help in longitudinal positive adaptation to covid stressors during the pandemic via meanings made as implored by Park (2021). Using the meaning making model (Park, 2010) it is proposed that covid stressors will lead to global meaning violation. Global meaning violation will further predict wellbeing, depression and anxiety longitudinally and also trigger the meaning making processes i.e. meaning making coping, an aspect of situational meaning making, and core beliefs re-examination, an aspect of global meaning making. Additionally, it is proposed that the meaning making processes will lead to positive adaptations via meanings made i.e. meaning making coping and core beliefs re-examination will be positively related to wellbeing and negatively related to depression and anxiety via posttraumatic growth, a situational meaning made, and footing in the world, a global meaning made, respectively. This study employs a 3 wave longitudinal design and uses structural equational modelling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses. 344 local community participants (63.95% females) completed all three surveys containing 3 attention checks to ensure high quality of data. Results indicated that acceptable goodness of fit indices supported the overall theoretical model. Findings from the longitudinal SEM indicated that covid stressors lead to global meaning violation which leads to meaning making coping and core belief re-examination at Time 1 (T1). Additionally, GMV at T1 predicted negative wellbeing at Time 2 (T2) but did not predict T2 depression and anxiety. Further, T1 meaning making coping longitudinally predicted T2 posttraumatic growth but T1 core belief re-examination did not predict T2 footing in the world. Moreover, T2 posttraumatic growth fully mediated the effect of T1 meaning making coping on T2 but not on Time 3 (T3) wellbeing, depression and anxiety. This mediatory effect was not seen for T2 footing in the world between T1 core beliefs re-examination and T2 or T3 wellbeing, depression, and anxiety outcomes. This is one of the first studies during the pandemic to provide support to core assumptions of meaning making model and enrich the literature that traumatic events like Covid19 disrupts individuals’ global meaning and this disruption is crucial for longitudinal wellbeing outcomes. Further, global meaning violation also triggers the meaning making processes of meaning making coping and core beliefs re-examination for positive adaptation to covid stressors. Moreover, this study adds to the literature that positive wellbeing outcomes of meaning making processes is mediated via meanings made by demonstrating that during covid outbreaks rather than core beliefs re-examination, meaning making coping employing both cognitive and emotional processing of stressors to change the situational meaning of the stressors, helps in positive adaptation to covid stressors via posttraumatic growth. Findings suggest potential practical implications for intervention based on cognitive and emotional processing therapy to improve wellbeing in the community during the pandemic.

ABSTRACT. The literature indicates that the high costs of migration, strict migration policies and uncertain conditions at the destination have caused an increase in migrants who decide to move alone (Démurger, 2015); In addition, according to the New Economics of Labor Migrants, the decision to migrate is made at the family level, so the migrant acquires commitments to contribute to the happiness of those who are left behind. The empirical literature points to positive and negative impacts of intimate migration on the happiness of those left behind, and that the net effect remains an empirical question (Joarder et al. 2017), so in this paper we review some empirical work about the theme. (Borraz et al. 2007; Cárdenas 2018; Graham et al. 2018) find an impact of intimate migration on the happiness of those left behind through two mechanisms: disruption in the home caused by the absence of the household member who emigrated, reducing happiness; and remittances, which often accompany emigration and which could compensate for the absence of the absent relative and probably increase happiness. Di Iasio (2018) points out the existence of two visions about the migration of intimates: a pessimistic one that points to remittances as a source of income for current consumption but that establishes dependence on the country of destination, and a more optimistic one that sees them as a development tool. Joarder et al. (2017), mention the benefits of remittances for the well-being of migrant families, through consumption and investment, but also the negative impacts because remittances from migrants can create an overdependence on the country of destination. Lara (2018) finds a negative correlation between the migratory intensity of the Mexican municipalities with lower indicators of happiness, but when controlling for the size of the town, region of the country and the incidence of poverty, he finds a positive correlation between both variables. Similarly, Hendriks, et al. (2018), find that receiving remittances produces significant economic gains, poverty alleviation, and increased consumption for families left behind, as well as improved access to health care and education for children, although remittance recipients also experience more negative affect because they suffer emotionally from experiencing greater sadness at being separated from their immigrant relatives. Ivlevs, et al. (2018) find that people with relatives abroad have higher levels of evaluative well-being, although at the same time those who are left behind are more likely to experience stress and depression. Scheffel and Zhang (2016) find that migration significantly reduces overall life satisfaction of those left behind and leads to a higher probability that they will suffer from depressive symptoms (loneliness), but instead find that in developed countries, remittances can cushion the negative effects on emotional health.

ABSTRACT. International migration for work is increasing rapidly around the world, especially in Eastern European countries. The most studies and reports on international migration have focused on adult migration flowing, giving almost no attention to the consequences on children left behind. However, living in a family with at least one parent working abroad for long periods of time is part of normal childhood experience for many children in the developing countries. Children who remain behind when their parents leave their countries of origin may be exposed to more stress, anxiety and other emotional and mental health problems. That’s why there is a need to increase our interest in this problem and understand the consequences for the well-being of children living in transnational families. The purpose of this study is to explore differences in subjective well-being among children from six Eastern European countries who reported that their parents do or don’t work abroad. The attention will be paid also on their family life and school life satisfaction. The analysis will use the data gathered from the children’s subjective well-being study, which was conducted among representative samples of pupils, as a part of the third wave of the Children's Worlds survey (isciweb.org). The Children’s Worlds is a major worldwide study of children’s lives and well-being. It’s is a unique initiative that deepens our understanding of the worldview through the eyes of young people. The analysis will utilize data collected from over 13000 children aged 10 and 12 from Albania, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Romania, participating in the study.

ABSTRACT. This study focuses on the relationship between social capital and life satisfaction of natives, first- and second-generation Westerners, and first- and second-generation non-Western immigrants in the Netherlands the social capital elements are mostly related to social contact aspect such as migrants' social contacts, participation in various activities, language proficiency and (individual/institutional) trust levels.

The study relies on the LISS panel data that makes part of the MESS Project and comprises 5.000 households that cover 7.500 individuals. Data were taken from Background Variables and the Core Study (Personality, Social Integration and Leisure and Religion and Ethnicity) and Wave 4-14 was used which gives better results for migrants.

The findings are in parallel with the life satisfaction literature: As the social contacts of immigrants with their friends and neighbors increase, their life satisfaction also increases. There is a strong relationship between immigrant participation in activities and life satisfaction. In other words, immigrants who feel integrated with and better communicate with native people have higher life satisfaction than immigrants who do not feel integrated.

ABSTRACT. The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic is regarded as one of the biggest economic and social shocks in many a decade. The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the already challenging conditions prevailing in South Africa's informal sector – especially among the informally wage employed and self-employed people in survivalist informal activities. Many of these men and women are migrants. South Africa has a rich history of migration and a new wave of migration has been in evidence since the turn of the century - with an increasing inflow of migrants into South Africa during that time. Migrants counts as among the most vulnerable groups in any country – and more so in developing countries. Migrant workers can be exposed to racism, xenophobia and various forms of discrimination on a continuous basis in the destination country. With no options to get employed or to receive the Social Relief of Distress grant (SRD), it stands to reason that the impact of COVID-19 on migrant day labourers’ subjective well-being have be even more pronounced.

We investigate and compare the levels and possible determinants of South African and migrant day labourers in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic by focusing on day labourers in Johannesburg, South Africa. The choice of the research location was reasoned on the fact that being the financial and economic heartbeat of South Africa, the impact of the pandemic on day labourers will be keenly felt. The day labour research population in Johannesburg was deemed to be people who congregate at informal hiring sites such as street corners, next to traffic lights, or in front of job-related businesses such as hardware stores – hoping to obtain temporary employment for the day or a number of days. Blaauw et al. (2018) showed that employment and income played a significant role in the subjective well-being level of day labourers as a result of their structural vulnerability to exogenous shocks. We use the data from a mixed-method survey design - the fieldwork of which was completed towards the end of 2021. We used a survey-based instrument containing a mixture of quantitative items as well as some open-ended qualitative questions to facilitate a more in-depth discussion of some key elements. A sample of 230 individuals will be analysed. We will specifically investigate whether day labourers had alternative opportunities to earn an income during the lockdown, whether the social support provided by the government reached this vulnerable group and if so, whether it delivered enough assistance to individuals who did in fact, receive it. The impact of this on the subjective well-being of South African and migrant day labourers will be investigated.

ABSTRACT. Studies on factors that influence subjective well-being have mushroomed. The factors influencing subjective well-being differ from society to society. Studies show that social capital is a very important factor affecting subjective well-being in collectivist societies. This paper examines the links between social capital and subjective well-being in Uzbekistan. Using World Values Survey, I estimated ordered logistic regression. The regression model included socioeconomic variables and data related to networks, trust, and institutions. These findings reinforce the general belief that there was a positive relationship between social capital (trust and participation in social activities) and subjective well-being in Uzbekistan. Although the importance of politics is not insignificant, the results showed that voting in local elections and believing that politics is important was likely to increase happiness and life satisfaction. The study has illustrated that trust in one's family and being a member of the local community had the greatest impact on subjective well-being.

ABSTRACT. This study examines how religiosity affects life satisfaction in 18 Latin American countries. Using the AmericasBarometer (LAPOP) dataset from 2008 to 2017, I explore how social and individual religiosity play a significant role in shaping people’s subjective well-being. Those who attend religious services and who believe that religion is an important component of their lives are significantly more satisfied than those who do not. When looking at individual religious groups, however, the results are not as intuitive. Evangelicals are the only group that is happier, when compared to Catholics (the largest religious group in Latin America). The results indicate that attending religious services and having a belief system is what matters for life satisfaction and not which denomination group people belong to, except for evangelicals (Pentecostals) who are happier and people in traditional religious denominations (e.g., candomblé, Umbanda, voodoo) who are unhappier.

ABSTRACT. Background: At present there is no research literature on the potential contribution to quality of life of Bible study, as a leisure activity. Today, in Israel, a wide and diverse public is studying the Bible by choice, not as a religious precept or as mandatory educational activity. In the broadest sense, Bible studies include written Torah, prophets and scriptures, oral Torah, Midrash, legend, and everything connected to the Jewish bookcase. Such studies inherently involve connecting with sacred and spiritual contents, exposure to ethical issues and opportunities for philosophical and religious contemplation, thus integrating interest, pleasure, inspiration, and enrichment. Such a setting begs the question of whether engaging in such studies is associated with higher levels of quality of life and meaning in life. Aims: To study the association between participation in Bible studies as a leisure activity and quality of life among men and women, secular and religious adults in Israel. The theoretical bases included Hobfoll's theory of Conservation of Resources (COR) and Newman et al.'s theory of leisure and subjective well-being. Methods: Participants were 234 men and women who study Bible regularly in their leisure time, mean age older than 55, divided into three groups: 56 learners in a collaborative study group (the hevruta learning method), 50 learners in classes of frontal lectures, and 128 participants who were studying various enrichment subjects by frontal lectures. All Participants reported having a high level of academic education and a good financial status. The self-report questionnaires included demographic information, characteristics and evaluations of the learning experience, the Spiritual Health and Life-Orientation Measure, the Snyder Hope Questionnaire, the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), and the Purpose in Life questionnaire. Results: Significant differences were found between the three groups, so that the levels of quality of life, social support, transcendentality (an aspect of spirituality), perceived importance of learning and satisfaction from learning were significantly higher among all Bible learners compared to those engaged in general enrichment courses. No differences were found in hope and meaning in life levels. Conclusions: The findings suggest that for adult learners of the Bible, the studies are a means of acquiring, strengthening and building resources, especially social support, that may improve their ability to cope with the stresses of life and thus improve their quality of life. The findings suggest that the social milieu in which the leisure activity is held is an important factor for fostering quality of life and meaning in life, possibly more than the discipline studied.

ABSTRACT. Introduction It’s a well-researched fact that religion/spirituality is positively associated with flourishing. Previous studies have shown that priests and ministers score higher on well-being metrics than respondents from almost any other profession. Recently, however, there has been concern that bishops’ intransparent management of the church crisis as well as a hostile media environment have had negative effects on priests’ well-being while also having caused high rates of burn-out among young priests in particular. The study contributes to this field by answering two research questions: 1) Are priests flourishing? On which flourishing domains are they doing best/worst? 2) Does the relationship (i.e., trust in, integrity of, and value-alignment) with their bishop explain differences in well-being?

Methods This presentation is based on two major new data sets that were collected in 2022: First, the largest Catholic priesthood study in the last 50 years (N = 3,516) that sampled Catholic and Eastern rite priests from 191 dioceses and religious institutes from all across the US. The survey achieved a very high response rate of 36% which enabled the generalizability of the results. As part of the survey, 105 in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted. Second, a census survey of Catholic bishops (N=131) was conducted. Some identical questions were asked of both priests and bishops.

Using multilevel and ordinal logistic regression results with applied survey-weights, we modeled levels of flourishing on the multidimensional Harvard Flourishing Index with a full set of control (age, size of diocese, region, year of ordination, health, education) and focal explanatory variables (trust in the bishop, integrity of the bishop, and political and theological alignment). Qualitative interviews are used for elaboration of priests’ levels of flourishing. Further nested regressions are then used to model trust in the bishop as the outcome variable.

Results and discussion A full 77% of priests and 81% of bishops can be categorized as flourishing. “I feel remarkably fulfilled in my life as a priest,” said one interview participant. “I mean, just being able to minister to people, being able to love them. Being able to be Christ for them. It's just, it's such a beautiful life,” he said. Priests’s scores on the eudaimonic domain of “meaning in life” were extremely high (9 out of 10).

However, the regression results revealed there is a 10-point (12%-point) difference between priests with the lowest level (“very little) of trust in their bishop compared to those with the highest level (“a great deal”). This difference is significant across flourishing domains and even holds up for self-rated physical health and this also cannot be explained away by the control variables.

The regression results showed that views about integrity of the bishop (saying one thing vs doing another) and political alignment are significant predictors of trust in the bishop.

Conclusions Priests set an example of how to achieve very high levels of flourishing. However, in light of the church crisis, priests’ well-being is highly-dependent on their trust in the bishop; this points to the broader importance of integrity in leadership.

ABSTRACT. The climate emergency and the emotional emergency are a tragically fatal combination. According to the Gallup Institute, sad passions such as anger, anxiety, worry and sadness have risen sharply since the beginning of this decade. The aim of this research is to understand these new emotions related to climate change on the basis of an empirical study in France and to link this study to the concept of recognition into the framework of the economy of happiness (Munier, 2018). The first part is devoted to a review of the literature on the link between climate change and happiness. The second part highlights the importance of intersubjective relationships and their beneficial effects on happiness and the environment through the prism of the concept of recognition. The third part is devoted to the empirical strategy on this issue.

ABSTRACT. This research studies the consequences of natural disasters for quality of life, and considers wellbeing indicators, such as life satisfaction and health satisfaction, as well as concerns about climate change as outcomes. The general relevance of this topic is due to its implications in light of current climate change trends; rising global temperatures are linked with more frequent and more intense extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires — all types of natural disasters that can have devastating impacts on human lives and their quality of life. Taking advantage of the quasi-experimental setting provided by Germany’s 2013 deluge — recognized as one of its most severe floods in six decades — we provide evidence on the impact of natural disasters on the quality of life of those affected.

The empirical analysis combines data from two sources. The first source comes from Osberghaus and Fugger (2022) who utilized high-resolution satellite imagery to create a dataset detailing the small-scale geographic areas affected by the 2013 flood. The second source is survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), which records information on various measures of quality of life. By merging these datasets, we can determine whether households resided in an area impacted by the flood.

We use a panel event study design to investigate the trajectory and magnitude of the effects that natural disasters have on various measures of quality of life, so as to uncover their short and long-term consequences. To do this, we compare the quality of life for respondents living in counties affected by the 2013 flood with that for unaffected respondents. The analysis is conducted separately for West Germany and East Germany; additionally, we explore gender differences when it comes to experiencing the flood.

Our research of the impact of directly experiencing Germany’s 2013 flood contributes insights into how natural disasters may affect people’s quality of life. By examining individuals who have experienced flooding, researchers can gain an understanding about the short- and long-term psychological and physical consequences that follow such disasters. This type of information is useful for policy makers to develop effective strategies for mitigating or preventing future damage from similar events. Possible policy recommendations derived from this research could include initiatives aimed at increasing public awareness about potential risks associated with floods.

References: Daniel Osberghaus and Carina Fugger. Natural disasters and climate change beliefs: The role of distance and prior beliefs. Global Environmental Change, 74:102515, 2022.

ABSTRACT. Retrieving a causal effect of air pollution on subjective well-being scores is a challenge in empirical research, because it can be argued that almost anything affects an individual's utility (which later affects the observed subjective well-being scores). As a result, most of the research using subjective well-being measures has focused on non-causal relations.

In this research I explore the use of a meteorological phenomenon to estimate the causal effect of ambient air pollution on life satisfaction: thermal inversions. This is the first study that estimates the causal impact of air pollution on life satisfaction in a developing economy.

Thermal inversions happen when the monotonic relation between altitude and temperature is broken. Normally, the air's temperature decreases with height. When a thermal inversion occurs, a mass of hot air reverses that relation. The change of the usual temperature pattern limits vertical ventilation from the surface, making the air below the thermal inversion, including pollutants, to get trapped below it. Thermal inversions are caused by the movement of big air masses in the atmosphere, and, conditional on weather, they do not have any effect on the surface other than impacting air pollution. This implies that thermal inversions meet the two conditions to be used as an instrument of air pollution.

The empirical study focuses on Chile. Chile is home to the most polluted city in the Americas, Coyhaique, and to three other cities in the top 10 most polluted cities of the continent (measured by PM2.5; WHO, 2018). Air pollution is present all throughout the country, but it is most prevalent in the southern regions, because of extensive use of biomass fuel for heating and cooking.

Data on surface weather, air pollution, and temperature by pressure levels data (used to build thermal inversion measures) are retrieved in 3-hour intervals from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts. This data is merged with to the Chilean Household survey data from 2013, which includes a life satisfaction question. Meteorological and survey data are matched using municipality of residence and date of interview, which allows to study the effect of contemporaneous air pollution on life satisfaction, as well as the effect of lagged and cumulative air pollution.

Preliminary results show that on average, a 1 ug/m3 increase of air pollution on the day of interview causes a decrease of life satisfaction of 0.8 points in a 10-point scale. The effect is greater for southern regions. Results show that people are affected both by contemporaneous air pollution, as well as lagged and cumulative air pollution in their place of residence. The preliminary results are robust to different measures of thermal inversions, and alternative air pollution datasets.

This research will help to provide further evidence on the effects of air pollution on human well-being in a high-pollution context. Moreover, it provides a method to estimate the causal effect of air pollution on human well-being in other settings.

ABSTRACT. According to Beck, in a modernizing world the economic, ecologic and biological threats force individuals to live in a “Risk Society” which reduces their quality of life. Besides, when it is considered along with the climate crisis the individual quality of life seems to overlap with the sense of security. In a globalizing society, the increasing carbon gas that results from industrial human activities harms the earth. Climate change causes problems such as epidemic diseases, natural disasters, famine, drought, storms, floods, fires and earthquakes. Besides the glaciers that melt faster than their natural phase affect the pressure of the continents which triggers earthquakes. Especially, countries that are at high-risk earthquake region become even more fragile. The migration that follows natural disasters further intensifies global security issues. The international security problems that are caused by environmental collapse force governments to negotiate through agreements such as UNFCCC. Nevertheless, governments’ different approaches distract them from cooperation. The earthquake that took place in Turkey in 2023 with the magnitude of 7.8 resulted in a great devastation and emphasized the significance of climate and security relationship. In the scope of this background, the international media coverage of the latest Turkish earthquake is analyzed through hermeneutical analysis and categorized according to media framing theory: uncertainty, alarmism, responsibility, conflict, safety. In this respect, the differences among historical, cultural and political perspectives of the countries are presented. Additionally, this study argues the impact of media framing on individual perception of risk, security and well-being during disasters.

ABSTRACT. Political ideology is known to be related to life satisfaction. Many studies have shown that conservative people are happier than liberal people (Schlenker et al., 2012). Underlying these political ideologies are known to be moral views.

According to the moral foundation theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2004; Haidt & Graham, 2007), there are five factors that constitute individual morality. These are (1) Harm/care, which condemns the imposition of suffering on others and concerns the virtues of compassion and protection, (2) Fairness/reciprocity, which does not allow unfair treatment and concerns the virtues of reciprocity and justice, (3) Ingroup/royalty, which guards against betrayal and concerns the virtues of loyalty to the group and the performance of duty, (4) Authority/respect, which is based on obedience to authority, hierarchical relationships, and respect for social order, and (5) Purity/sanctity, which is based on avoiding physical and mental pollution and upholding integrity and fidelity. The first two factors are referred to as the individualizing foundation and the latter three as the binding foundation, and are associated with liberal and conservative morality, respectively.

Research on the relationship between morality and political ideology has been conducted primarily in the West. It has also been noted that in Japan and other Asian countries, the link between the five moral foundations and political ideology is not confirmed. In fact, a survey using the Japanese version of the original moral foundation questionnaire (MFQ) confirms inconsistent results in the correspondence between the five moral foundations and the two factors related to political ideology identified in previous studies (Murakami & Miura, 2019).

In this study, we investigated the relationship between moral foundations, political ideology, and life satisfaction in Japan.

Based on the above background, we first improved the Japanese version of the original MFQ so that the correspondence between the five moral foundations and political ideology would be consistent. Specifically, the questions for the inconsistent items were modified to more accurately reflect the concepts measured by the questions, based on the moral foundations dictionary first developed by Graham et al. (2009), then extended by Matsuo et al. (2019) as a Japanese version. As a result, the consistency between the five moral foundations and the two political ideology factors was confirmed, and the goodness of fit of the model was improved.

The MFQ developed in this study was then used to examine the relationship between moral foundations, political ideology, and life satisfaction. The results of the structural equation modeling analysis indicated that the binding foundation associated with conservative moral values contributed positively to life satisfaction; conversely, the individualizing foundation associated with liberal moral values contributed negatively to life satisfaction. These results are consistent with those of previous studies that have been conducted primarily in the West.

ABSTRACT. In the new millennium, the European economies were in heavier waters than usual, due to the financial crisis (2008) and the euro crisis (2010). Moreover, economic inequality has increased in the majority of countries, accompanied by concerns about a growing commodification of life within an increasingly selfish capitalism. Against this backdrop, the notion that European societies have generally become more divided, that is more unequal and polarized, is widely accepted, both in academia and the general public.

This paper addresses the question of whether there is evidence of a (growing) social division in terms of subjective well-being. Our research questions are as follows: (1.) How unequal and polarized is well-being distributed in European countries, and which societal characteristics influence the distribution? (2.) Is there evidence of growing well-being inequality and polarization over time? (3.) Is there a growing well-being gap between high-income and low-income groups, that is, between the richest and the poorest 20 percent of the population? Our analysis is based on population-representative survey data for 28 European countries from four rounds of the European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) 2003-2016. The EQLS provides a tried-and-tested item on overall life satisfaction as a summary measure of evaluative well-being. We employ inequality indices and polarization indices which are taylor-made to ordinal data, such as the Alliston-Foster-Index, the Cowell-Flachaire-Index, and the Bhattacharyya-coefficient.

Preliminary analyses reveal that European countries are characterized by a different extent of well-being inequality and polarization generally, and by a varying well-being gap between income groups. The scale of these divisions (RQ1) is systematically smaller in more affluent countries (a strong and robust effect), and larger in economically more unequal countries (a weaker and less robust effect). Seen over the study period 2003-2016 (RQ2), for the vast majority of countries we do not find evidence for growing inequality and polarization of well-being within the population. When zooming in on income groups (RQ3), the data likewise suggest stability over time for the majority of countries; yet in a few countries, there is a growing well-being gap between those in the highest and in the lowest income quintile.

Overall, our presentation suggests quite a resilience of the well-being distribution against both trends in income inequality and the intermediary economic crisis. Yet in some countries, vigilant attention should be paid to the lot of the bottom 20 percent in particular.

ABSTRACT. A default assumption in mainstream wellbeing research holds that subjective wellbeing (SWB) is important because most people value pleasure and life satisfaction, i.e., the constituent dimensions of SWB. But few studies have tested the assumption and research investigating the issue suggests that other values are more important. The current paper adds to the debate by presenting results from two experimental studies on values and wellbeing, both using samples from a commercial panel provider. The first study (N = 761) included a Norwegian (n = 370) and US-American (n = 391) sample and found that, in both countries, participants’ pairwise comparisons of a set of values ended up with SWB as the least prioritized value in every value pair they evaluated. Country differences indicated that solidarity was more important in the Norwegian sample and moral integrity was more important in the US-sample. It further showed that participants who first made their pairwise value comparison and then wrote down their idea of a good life (open response format), mentioned more civic elements in their written reports than participants who reported on their good life before they did the pairwise value comparison. A second study in Norway (N = 947) basically replicated these results but applied two different techniques to measure value importance: ranking and rating. While life satisfaction was ranked as most important of eight life values, it dropped to sixth place when values were rated on a scale from 1 (completely unimportant) to 7 (very important). The opposite pattern was observed for human development, which was given the highest mean rating but ranked sixth. Civic values, i.e., moral integrity and solidarity, were held as valuable using both rating and ranking scales, and was rated and ranked second and third, respectively. In sum, we found that value priorities vary with context and methodology, but SWB is typically not among the most important life values.