This study aimed to identify determinants of interdependent happiness (IH), with a focus on social capital resources. Using data from a population survey conducted in Sapporo, Japan, we ran hierarchical regressions to compare determinants of IH with determinants of a standard measure of subjective well-being (SWB), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). While we confirmed the relationships of control variables generally associated with SWB also for IH, we found several decisive differences between the two well-being measures regarding social capital. For IH, an overall larger share of variance was predicted by social capital resources than for SWLS. IH is most strongly affected by social affiliation, which measures a sense of belonging to society, followed by interpersonal reliance, and social support. Reciprocal norms and institutional reliance predicted only IH, but not SWLS. Overall, our results imply that IH captures aspects of well-being related to social capital not fully covered by standard measures of SWB. Thus, for societies in which the cultural construal of happiness is more inclined to IH, the specific importance of social capital resources for SWB might be underestimated when relying solely on standard measures of well-being.

Measures of sustainability-related participatory programs vary according to social and cultural contexts. Thus, this study proposed a stepwise participatory program in which stakeholders and randomly chosen citizens (citizen panels) were repeatedly and sequentially involved, and the citizen panels discharged discrete functions through all the planning stages. Procedural and outcome fairness was focal to the evaluation of the participatory program because these criteria are widely deemed essential for public acceptance. Evaluation by nonparticipants was imperative because of the limited number of participants, but sustainability plans affect and mandate the cooperation of the general public. Therefore, this study undertaken during the revision of the city of Sapporo’s environmental master plan compared evaluations of nonparticipants with those of participants from three stages of the stepwise participatory program applying backcasting scenario workshops. A two-wave mailout survey was administered to test two hypotheses: (a) workshop participants would evaluate the acceptance, process, outcome, and antecedent factors more positively than nonparticipants, and (b) procedural fairness and evaluation of expected outcomes would affect acceptance. The results supported these hypotheses. Procedural fairness was associated with acceptance most robustly and consistently. The study’s primary contribution to the extant literature entails accumulating empirical evidence on stepwise participatory programs.

Multisensory integration plays an important role in the experience of the bodily self. Recently, the relationship between exteroception and interoception has been actively debated. The first evidence was a report that the susceptibility of the sense of ownership over a fake hand (i.e., illusory hand ownership: IHO) in the typical rubber hand illusion is negatively modulated by the accuracy of the heartbeat perception (i.e., cardiac interoceptive accuracy: CIA). If reliable, this would suggest an antagonism between the exteroceptive and interoceptive cues underlying the bodily self. However, some inconsistent data have been reported, raising questions about the robustness of the initial evidence. To investigate this robustness, we estimated the extent of the modulatory effect of CIA on IHO susceptibility by applying Bayesian hierarchical modeling to two independent datasets. Overall, our results did not support that IHO susceptibility is modulated by CIA. The present estimates with high uncertainty cannot exclude the hypothesis that the relationship between IHO susceptibility and CIA is so weak as to be negligible. Further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to reach a conclusion about the extent of the modulatory effect. These findings highlight the lack of robustness of key evidence supporting the “antagonism hypothesis”.