IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dar/wpaper/63663.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Subjective Well-Being and Air Quality in Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Schmitt, Maike

Abstract

This paper analyses the relation between air quality and subjective well-being in Germany. Life Satisfaction (LS) data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) is connected with daily county pollution in terms of carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) from 1998 to 2008. The assumed microeconometric happiness function is estimated considering individual time invariant effects. It is observed that O3 has a significant negative impact on life satisfaction. The estimated influence of current CO as well as NO2 is not significant. Moreover, I found that LS of people with environmental worries is more affected by ozone pollution. This was not the case for people with a bad health status. Using the marginal rate of substitution between income and air pollution, it is calculated that an increase of one µg/m3 in daily average county O3 has to be compensated by an increase of €11.33 in monthly net household income to hold an average individual's LS constant.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Schmitt, Maike, 2013. "Subjective Well-Being and Air Quality in Germany," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 63663, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    • Handle: RePEc:dar:wpaper:63663
    Note: for complete metadata visit http://tubiblio.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/63663/
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. MacCulloch & Rafael Di Tella & Andrew J. Oswald, 2001. "Preferences over Inflation and Unemployment: Evidence from Surveys of Happiness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 335-341, March.
    2. Clark, Andrew E & Oswald, Andrew J, 1994. "Unhappiness and Unemployment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(424), pages 648-659, May.
    3. Rehdanz, Katrin & Maddison, David, 2005. "Climate and happiness," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 111-125, January.
      • Katrin Rehdanz & David J. Maddison, 2003. "Climate and Happiness," Working Papers FNU-20, Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University, revised Apr 2003.
    4. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2002. "What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 402-435, June.
    5. Theodossiou, I., 1998. "The effects of low-pay and unemployment on psychological well-being: A logistic regression approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 85-104, January.
    6. Andreas Knabe & Steffen Rätzel, 2010. "Better an insecure job than no job at all? Unemployment, job insecurity and subjective wellbeing," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(3), pages 2486-2494.
    7. Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Ada & Gowdy, John M., 2007. "Environmental degradation and happiness," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 509-516, January.
    8. Welsch, Heinz, 2006. "Environment and happiness: Valuation of air pollution using life satisfaction data," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(4), pages 801-813, July.
    9. Luechinger, Simon, 2010. "Life satisfaction and transboundary air pollution," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 4-6, April.
    10. Rehdanz, Katrin & Maddison, David, 2008. "Local environmental quality and life-satisfaction in Germany," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 787-797, February.
    11. Gary Chamberlain, 1980. "Analysis of Covariance with Qualitative Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(1), pages 225-238.
    12. Rafael Di Tella & Robert J. MacCulloch & Andrew J. Oswald, 2003. "The Macroeconomics of Happiness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 809-827, November.
    13. Andrew E. Clark & Paul Frijters & Michael A. Shields, 2008. "Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(1), pages 95-144, March.
    14. Gert G. Wagner & Joachim R. Frick & Jürgen Schupp, 2007. "The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) – Scope, Evolution and Enhancements," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 127(1), pages 139-169.
    15. Richard A. Easterlin (ed.), 2002. "Happiness in Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2479.
    16. Simon Luechinger, 2009. "Valuing Air Quality Using the Life Satisfaction Approach," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(536), pages 482-515, March.
    17. Gerdtham, Ulf-G & Johannesson, Magnus, 2001. "The relationship between happiness, health, and socio-economic factors: results based on Swedish microdata," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 553-557.
    18. MacKerron, George & Mourato, Susana, 2009. "Life satisfaction and air quality in London," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(5), pages 1441-1453, March.
    19. Easterlin, Richard A., 1974. "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence," MPRA Paper 111773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Bruno S. Frey & Simon Luechinger & Alois Stutzer, 2010. "The Life Satisfaction Approach to Environmental Valuation," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 139-160, October.
    21. Daniel Kahneman & Alan B. Krueger, 2006. "Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 3-24, Winter.
    22. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Paul Frijters, 2004. "How Important is Methodology for the estimates of the determinants of Happiness?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 641-659, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rong Gao & Hua Ma & Hongmei Ma & Jiahui Li, 2020. "Impacts of Different Air Pollutants on Dining-Out Activities and Satisfaction of Urban and Suburban Residents," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-13, March.
    2. Yu, Shuangli & Shen, Yuxin & Zhang, Fan & Shen, Yongjian & Xu, Zefeng, 2022. "Air pollution and executive incentive: Evidence from pay-performance sensitivity," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    3. Giovanis, Eleftherios & Ozdamar, Oznur, 2014. "The effects of Air Pollution on Health Status in Great Britain," MPRA Paper 59988, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Xuan Tian & Cheng Zhang & Bing Xu, 2022. "The Impact of Air Pollution on Residents’ Happiness: A Study on the Moderating Effect Based on Pollution Sensitivity," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(12), pages 1-20, June.
    5. Laffan, Kate, 2018. "Every breath you take, every move you make: Visits to the outdoors and physical activity help to explain the relationship between air pollution and subjective wellbeing," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 96-113.
    6. Castellacci, Fulvio & Tveito, Vegard, 2018. "Internet use and well-being: A survey and a theoretical framework," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 308-325.
    7. Siyu Chen & Lingyun He, 2021. "Air Pollution and Medical Insurance: From a Health-Based Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-13, November.
    8. Mathias Kloss & Thomas Kirschstein & Steffen Liebscher & Martin Petrick, 2019. "Robust Productivity Analysis: An application to German FADN data," Papers 1902.00678, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2019.
    9. Ozdamar, Oznur & Giovanis, Eleftherios, 2014. "Valuing the Effects of Air and Noise Pollution on Health Status in Turkey," MPRA Paper 59992, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Liu, L-Q. & Yin, Z-L. & Xie, B-C. & Zhou, W., 2020. "Willingness to Pay for Better Air Quality: The case of China," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2042, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    11. Fulvio Castellacci & Vegard Tveito, 2016. "The Effects of ICTs on Well-being: A Survey and a Theoretical Framework," Working Papers on Innovation Studies 20161004, Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. García-Mainar, Inmaculada & Montuenga, Víctor M. & Navarro-Paniagua, María, 2015. "Workplace environmental conditions and life satisfaction in Spain," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 136-146.
    2. Sanduijav, Chimedregzen & Ferreira, Susana & Filipski, Mateusz & Hashida, Yukiko, 2021. "Air pollution and happiness: Evidence from the coldest capital in the world," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    3. Bertram, Christine & Rehdanz, Katrin, 2015. "The role of urban green space for human well-being," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 139-152.
    4. Juncal Cuñado & Fernando Gracia, 2013. "Environment and Happiness: New Evidence for Spain," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 112(3), pages 549-567, July.
    5. Ferreira, Susana & Akay, Alpaslan & Brereton, Finbarr & Cuñado, Juncal & Martinsson, Peter & Moro, Mirko & Ningal, Tine F., 2013. "Life satisfaction and air quality in Europe," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 1-10.
    6. Welsch, Heinz, 2009. "Implications of happiness research for environmental economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(11), pages 2735-2742, September.
    7. Eleftherios Giovanis, 2019. "Worthy to lose some money for better air quality: applications of Bayesian networks on the causal effect of income and air pollution on life satisfaction in Switzerland," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(5), pages 1579-1611, November.
    8. Ary José A. Souza-Jr., 2021. "Climate change and behavior: Do environmental attitudes and perceptions impact on subjective well-being in Europe?," Working Papers REM 2021/0207, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.
    9. Welsch, Heinz & Ferreira, Susana, 2014. "Environment, Well-Being, and Experienced Preference," International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, now publishers, vol. 7(3-4), pages 205-239, December.
    10. O'Donnell, Gus & Oswald, Andrew J., 2015. "National well-being policy and a weighted approach to human feelings," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 59-70.
    11. Zerrahn, Alexander & Krekel, Christian, 2015. "Sowing the Wind and Reaping the Whirlwind? The Effect of Wind Turbines on Residential Well-Being," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112956, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    12. Kopmann, Angela & Rehdanz, Katrin, 2013. "A human well-being approach for assessing the value of natural land areas," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 20-33.
    13. Yuta J. Masuda & Jason R. Williams & Heather Tallis, 2021. "Does Life Satisfaction Vary with Time and Income? Investigating the Relationship Among Free Time, Income, and Life Satisfaction," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(5), pages 2051-2073, June.
    14. Han, Ahram & Ten, Gi Khan & Wang, Shun, 2023. "Gray skies and blue moms: The effect of air pollution on parental life satisfaction," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    15. Edsel Beja Jr., 2013. "Subjective Well-Being Approach to the Valuation of International Development: Evidence for the Millennium Development Goals," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 111(1), pages 141-159, March.
    16. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2013. "Happiness economics," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 35-60, March.
    17. Byela Tibesigwa & Martine Visser & Brennan Hodkinson, 2016. "Effects of Objective and Subjective Income Comparisons on Subjective Wellbeing," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 128(1), pages 361-389, August.
    18. Tetsuya Tsurumi & Shunsuke Managi, 2017. "Monetary Valuations of Life Conditions in a Consistent Framework: The Life Satisfaction Approach," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 18(5), pages 1275-1303, October.
    19. Antje Mertens & Miriam Beblo, 2016. "Self-Reported Satisfaction and the Economic Crisis of 2007–2010: Or How People in the UK and Germany Perceive a Severe Cyclical Downturn," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 125(2), pages 537-565, January.
    20. Dolan, Paul & Peasgood, Tessa & White, Mathew, 2008. "Do we really know what makes us happy A review of the economic literature on the factors associated with subjective well-being," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 94-122, February.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dar:wpaper:63663. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dekanatssekretariat (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ivthdde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.