Information technologies and subjective well-being: does the Internet raise material aspirations?

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. Abstract This paper examines whether access to modern information technologies, in particular the internet, has an impact on invididual positionality -meaning the degree to which subjective well-being is affected by income relative to others rather than absolute income. We provide empirical evidence that positionality and internet access are intertwined. Exploiting variation over time in a panel of European households, we find stated material aspirations to be significantly positively related to computer access in areas with advanced internet infrastructure. Furthermore, we report cross-sectional evidence from the World Values Survey suggesting an indirect negative effect of internet access on subjective well-being since people who regularly use the internet as a source of information derive less satisfaction from income. Together, the empirical findings highlight the importance of information sets for how individuals evaluate own living conditions relative to others and suggests a vital role for informational globalisation to affect positionality. Terms of use: Documents in

Economic Growth Evens Out Happiness: Evidence from Six Surveys

“…This is very likely the case with the internet. Clark and Senik () show that those who have internet access at home are also more likely to report that they compare their income to others (although they do not have data on exogenous changes in internet access, for which see Lohmann, ). Over the course of economic growth, this dampening effect will be concentrated amongst the richer, and perhaps also amongst those who were previously among the happiest.…”

Exploring the Relationship between IT Infrastructure and Income Inequality through Diffusion of Innovations Theory

“…Socio-economic inequality can manifest into many issues, such as lack of opportunity and a decrease in the subjective well-being of individuals [16]. Income inequality rose sharply in the United States (US) in the last forty years, but has increased only slightly in other countries such as France and Japan [15].…”

How's Life in the Digital Age? (Summary in Spanish)

“…To estimate the effects of Internet access on life satisfaction, a standard model of the determinants of life satisfaction is used (Frey and Stutzer, 2005;Helliwell, 2008;Dolan, Peasgood and White, 2008), where Internet access is used as the explanatory variable of interest alongside a set of demographic characteristics as well as country-fixed effects to control for country-level variance in terms of living standards as well as potential cultural determinants of life satisfaction responses . This approach does not differ substantially from other studies into the relationship between life satisfaction and Internet access or use (Graham and Nikolova, 2012;Lohmann, 2015). Conceptually, the nature of the life satisfaction variable lends itself best to an ordered probit model.…”

“…The idea that online exposure to political debates increases political engagement finds support in studies that have found positive associations between the online exposure to political discussions and offline political participation (Gil de Zúñiga, Molyneux and Zheng, 2014). The Internet also allows people to exert pressure on political processes through online petition platforms such as Change.org 12 or Avaaz 13 as well as through government-backed political participation platforms such as DemocracyOS 14 in Argentina (Mancini, 2015). Conversely, it has also been suggested that online political engagement may crowd out traditional forms of political participation (Christensen, 2011).…”

“…It is difficult to assess the long-term impact of the Internet and digital technologies on life satisfaction due to the lack of long-term panel data that includes variables on Internet access and use. However, a number of studies have attempted to estimate this relationship using cross-sectional data (Dolan, Peasgood and White, 2008;Kavetsos and Koutroumpis, 2013;Graham and Nikolova, 2012;Lohmann, 2015). These studies find a consistently positive relationship between internet use and life satisfaction at the individual level.…”