Do Geographical Variations in Climate Influence Life-Satisfaction?

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Accounting for socioeconomic and demographic variables as well as country specific effects, households' willingness to pay for changes in climate is revealed using European data on reported life satisfaction. Individuals located in areas with lower average levels of sunshine and higher average levels of relative humidity are less satisfied as are individuals in locations subject to significant seasonal variation in monthly mean temperatures and rain days. Ranking regions according to the preferred climates households appear strongly to favour the Mediterranean climate over the climate of Northern Europe. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may

Does Daily Sunshine Make You Happy? Subjective Measures of Well‐Being and the Weather

“…In addition, rainfall also exerts a significant negative effect on reported levels of well-being and the authors argue that the effects of climate change-as reported by the IPCC-might lead the positive well-being effect for the majority of the Russian population. Other studies by Becchetti et al (2007), Kööts et al (2011) and Murray et al (2013) also find evidence that temperature, sunshine, humidity, fog, rain are related to indicators of happiness, life satisfaction and affective experiences, and thus, there seems to be a growing body of literature that suggests that weather patterns influence the way we react and perceive well-being.…”

“…() and Murray et al . () also find evidence that temperature, sunshine, humidity, fog, rain are related to indicators of happiness, life satisfaction and affective experiences, and thus, there seems to be a growing body of literature that suggests that weather patterns influence the way we react and perceive well‐being.…”

“…This is somewhat surprising as we are all exposed, on daily basis, to various weather phenomena and there is a common belief that poor weather conditions decreases people's happiness, well-being and mood. To date, only some studies have examined the relationship between weather and individual well-being (see Barnston, 1988;Frijters and Van Praag, 1998;Keller et al, 2005;Rehdanz and Maddison, 2005;Becchetti et al, 2007;Denissen et al, 2008;Kööts et al, 2011;Tsutsui, 2013;Murray et al, 2013) and there does not appear to be a clear consensus on the results.…”

Well-being effects of a major natural disaster: The case of Fukushima

“…They comprise air pollution (Welsch, 2002(Welsch, , 2006Luechinger, 2009;MacKerron and Mourato, 2009;Ferreira and Moro, 2010;Levinson, 2012), airport noise (Van Praag and Baarsma, 2005), climate parameters (Rehdanz and Maddison, 2005;Maddison and Rehdanz, 2011;Murray et al, 2013), flood events (Luechinger and Raschky, 2009), and drought events (Carroll et al, 2009). Kimball et al (2006) investigated changes in happiness for US adults after hurricane Katrina.…”

Life satisfaction and air quality in Europe

“…Smyth et al (2008) use pollution data in 30 cities in urban China, and also find a clear negative impact of SO 2 emission on subjective well-being. MacKerron and Mourato (2009) A recent paper by Murray et al (2011) considers the regional variation of climate across Europe and its impact on life satisfaction for the third wave of the European Values Survey. However, it does not consider air pollution, which, at least in the medium-run, is more amenable to policy intervention than climate.…”