IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/sscijp/v25y2022i2p273-296..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Japanese Subjective Well-Being Indicator Based on Twitter Data
[‘Collective Smile: Measuring Societal Happiness from Geolocated Images’]

Author

Listed:
  • Tiziana CARPI
  • Airo HINO
  • Stefano Maria IACUS
  • Giuseppe PORRO

Abstract

This study presents for the first time the SWB-J index, a subjective well-being indicator for Japan based on Twitter data. The index is composed by eight dimensions of subjective well-being and is estimated relying on Twitter data by using human supervised sentiment analysis. The index is then compared with the analogous SWB-I index for Italy in order to verify possible analogies and cultural differences. Further, through structural equation models, we investigate the relationship between economic and health conditions of the country and the well-being latent variable and illustrate how this latent dimension affects the SWB-J and SWB-I indicators. It turns out that, as expected, economic and health welfare is only one aspect of the multidimensional well-being that is captured by the Twitter-based indicator.

Suggested Citation

  • Tiziana CARPI & Airo HINO & Stefano Maria IACUS & Giuseppe PORRO, 2022. "A Japanese Subjective Well-Being Indicator Based on Twitter Data [‘Collective Smile: Measuring Societal Happiness from Geolocated Images’]," Social Science Japan Journal, University of Tokyo and Oxford University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 273-296.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:sscijp:v:25:y:2022:i:2:p:273-296.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ssjj/jyac002
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Iacus Stefano M. & Salini Silvia & Siletti Elena & Porro Giuseppe, 2020. "Controlling for Selection Bias in Social Media Indicators through Official Statistics: a Proposal," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 36(2), pages 315-338, June.
    2. Simon Kuznets, 1934. "National Income, 1929-1932," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kuzn34-1.
    3. Takaki Hayashi & Nakahiro Yoshida, 2008. "Asymptotic normality of a covariance estimator for nonsynchronously observed diffusion processes," Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Springer;The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, vol. 60(2), pages 367-406, June.
    4. Christopher Barrington-Leigh & Alice Escande, 2018. "Measuring Progress and Well-Being: A Comparative Review of Indicators," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 135(3), pages 893-925, February.
    5. Angus Deaton, 2012. "The financial crisis and the well-being of Americans," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 64(1), pages 1-26, January.
    6. Ed Diener & Eunkook Suh & Heidi Smith & Liang Shao, 1995. "National differences in reported subjective well-being: Why do they occur?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 7-32, January.
    7. Rossouw, Stephanie & Greyling, Talita, 2020. "Big Data and Happiness," GLO Discussion Paper Series 634, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    8. S. M. Iacus & G. Porro & S. Salini & E. Siletti, 2022. "An Italian Composite Subjective Well-Being Index: The Voice of Twitter Users from 2012 to 2017," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 161(2), pages 471-489, June.
    9. Natalie Wong & Xianmin Gong & Helene H. Fung, 2020. "Does Valuing Happiness Enhance Subjective Well-Being? The Age-Differential Effect of Interdependence," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 1-14, January.
    10. Michiko Kumano, 2018. "On the Concept of Well-Being in Japan: Feeling Shiawase as Hedonic Well-Being and Feeling Ikigai as Eudaimonic Well-Being," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 13(2), pages 419-433, June.
    11. Yukun Zhao & Feng Yu & Bo Jing & Xiaomeng Hu & Ang Luo & Kaiping Peng, 2019. "An Analysis of Well-Being Determinants at the City Level in China Using Big Data," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 973-994, June.
    12. van der Wielen, Wouter & Barrios, Salvador, 2021. "Economic sentiment during the COVID pandemic: Evidence from search behaviour in the EU," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    13. Rosseel, Yves, 2012. "lavaan: An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 48(i02).
    14. Angus Deaton & Arthur A. Stone, 2016. "Understanding context effects for a measure of life evaluation: how responses matter," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 68(4), pages 861-870.
    15. Luigi Curini & Stefano Iacus & Luciano Canova, 2015. "Measuring Idiosyncratic Happiness Through the Analysis of Twitter: An Application to the Italian Case," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 121(2), pages 525-542, April.
    16. Daniel Kahneman & Alan B. Krueger & David Schkade & Norbert Schwarz & Arthur Stone, 2004. "Toward National Well-Being Accounts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 429-434, May.
    17. Daniel J. Hopkins & Gary King, 2010. "A Method of Automated Nonparametric Content Analysis for Social Science," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(1), pages 229-247, January.
    18. Greyling, Talita & Rossouw, Stephanie & Adhikari, Tamanna, 2020. "Happiness-lost: Did Governments make the right decisions to combat Covid-19?," GLO Discussion Paper Series 556, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    19. Petra Kralj Novak & Jasmina Smailović & Borut Sluban & Igor Mozetič, 2015. "Sentiment of Emojis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(12), pages 1-22, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Tiziana Carpi & Airo Hino & Stefano Maria Iacus & Giuseppe Porro, 2021. "Twitter Subjective Well-Being Indicator During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Country Comparative Study," Papers 2101.07695, arXiv.org.
    2. Silvia Facchinetti & Elena Siletti, 2022. "Well-being Indicators: a Review and Comparison in the Context of Italy," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 159(2), pages 523-547, January.
    3. António Caleiro, 2011. "Desemprego e Felicidade em Portugal," Economics Working Papers 5_2011, University of Évora, Department of Economics (Portugal).
    4. 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.
    5. Deaton, Angus, 2018. "What do self-reports of wellbeing say about life-cycle theory and policy?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 18-25.
    6. Julia S. Granderath & Andreas Martin & Laura Froehlich, 2021. "The Effect of Participation in Adult Education on Life Satisfaction of Immigrants and Natives: A Longitudinal Analysis," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(7), pages 3043-3067, October.
    7. Blanchflower, David G & Oswald, Andrew, 2011. "International Happiness," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 39, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    8. Daniel J. Benjamin & Kristen Cooper & Ori Heffetz & Miles S. Kimball, 2023. "From Happiness Data to Economic Conclusions," NBER Working Papers 31727, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Jörg Döpke & Philip Maschke, 2015. "Are There Business Cycles “beyond GDP”? Alternative Measures to GDP at Business Cycle Frequencies," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot GmbH, Berlin, vol. 61(2), pages 115-139.
    10. Robson Morgan & Kelsey J. O’Connor, 2022. "Labor Market Policy and Subjective Well-Being During the Great Recession," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 391-422, February.
    11. Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2008. "Hypertension and happiness across nations," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 218-233, March.
    12. Rossouw, Stephanie & Greyling, Talita, 2020. "Big Data and Happiness," GLO Discussion Paper Series 634, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    13. Rossouw, Stephanie & Greyling, Talita & Adhikari, Tamanna, 2021. "New Zealand's happiness and COVID-19: a Markov Switching Dynamic Regression Model," GLO Discussion Paper Series 573 [rev.], Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    14. Philip S. Morrison & Stephanié Rossouw & Talita Greyling, 2022. "The impact of exogenous shocks on national wellbeing. New Zealanders’ reaction to COVID-19," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(3), pages 1787-1812, June.
    15. Francesca Greco & Alessandro Polli, 2021. "Security Perception and People Well-Being," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(2), pages 741-758, January.
    16. Marcus Klemm, 2022. "Well-being Changes from Year to Year: A Comparison of Current, Remembered and Predicted Life Satisfaction," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 1669-1681, April.
    17. Luca D’Acci, 2011. "Measuring Well-Being and Progress," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 104(1), pages 47-65, October.
    18. Fernanda Marquez-Padilla & Jorge Alvarez, 2018. "Grading happiness: what grading systems tell us about cross-country wellbeing comparisons," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(2), pages 1138-1155.
    19. Christopher Christodoulou & Stefan Schneider & Arthur Stone, 2014. "Validation of a Brief Yesterday Measure of Hedonic Well-Being and Daily Activities: Comparison with the Day Reconstruction Method," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 115(3), pages 907-917, February.
    20. Senik, Claudia, 2009. "Direct evidence on income comparisons and their welfare effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 408-424, October.

    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:oup:sscijp:v:25:y:2022:i:2:p:273-296.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/ssjj .

    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.