Does Living on an Island Make You Happier?

Abstract

This paper revisits the literature on the economics and spatial economics of happiness with a particular focus on geographical and environmental features pertaining to islands and related characteristics and concepts such as insularity. It includes preliminary statistical analysis of suitable secondary data in Europe including most of the variables that are thought to be associated with subjective well-being measures and examines whether and the extent to which insularity and living on an island may have a statistically significant impact on happiness when compared to mainland areas. To that end the paper makes a start in addressing aspects of a new research agenda for happiness and islands, which considers a number of attributes of islands that are typically seen as negative from an regional economic performance perspective (mostly relating to remoteness and poor accessibility to the mainland) but which might be considered as positive in terms of happiness and well-being.