Large-scale social surveys typically elicit levels of happiness and/or life satisfaction. This paper studies how such reports of happiness and life satisfaction are related to measures of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). Major findings are the following: (1) PA and NA levels...

Drawing on the distinction between envy and signaling effects in income comparison, this paper uses 307,465 observations for subjective well-being and its covariates from Germany, 1990-2009, to study whether the nature of income comparison has changed in the process of economic development, and...

Electricity from renewable sources avoids the disadvantages of conventional power generation (air pollution, greenhouse gases, nuclear risk) but often meets with local resistance due to visual, acoustic, and odor nuisance. We use representative panel data on the subjective well-being of 36,475...

Conceptualizing externalities from perceived nuclear risk as being related to distance from nuclear facilities, we estimate the relationship between Swiss citizens’ life satisfaction (understood as a proxy of utility) and the distance of their place of residence from the nearest nuclear power...

Recent years have seen a sharp increase in the use of subjective well-being data in environmental economics. This article discusses the conceptual underpinnings of using such data as a tool for preference elicitation and non-market valuation. Given the connection of those data to the notion of...

This paper uses data on the life satisfaction of more than 100,000 individuals in 21 European countries, 2002-2011, to study the relationship between subjective well-being and the prices for households of electricity, oil and gas. We find that energy prices have statistically and economically...

Following a major earthquake off the Pacific coast of Japan, a tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three reactors in Fukushima, causing a major nuclear accident on 11 March 2011. Based on a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences approach we use panel data for 5,979 individuals...

We use survey data for 139,517 individuals in 26 European Countries, 2002-2011, to estimate the relationship between subjective well-being (SWB) and production shares of various types of electricity generation. The estimated relationships are taken to represent preference relationships over...

Drawing on the distinction between envy and signaling effects in income comparison, this paper uses 307,465 observations for subjective well-being and its covariates from Germany, 1990-2009, to study whether the nature of income comparison has changed in the process of economic development, and...

This paper studies whether pro-environmental consumption choices are consistent with utility maximization and what role the consumption behavior of reference persons and one's own past behavior play in this context. By combining data on individuals' pro-environmental consumption from a unique...