Impacts of Culture, Ethics, and Happiness upon Environment: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses Across Countries with Special Reference to Ancient Indian Culture

The existing literature reveals a strong relationship between culture and ethics and environment or nature which significantly influences how people perceive and interact with the environment, ultimately impacting environmental preservation practices. In the similar line, good culture, ethics, and other social indicators of happiness help in improving the economic status of the people and nature’s conservation which ultimately leads to attainment of sustainable happiness. Under the backdrop, the study frames two objectives: (1) to examine theoretically the role of culture and ethics including sane concepts of happiness in environmental preservation with special reference to ancient Indian culture and (2) to examine empirically how happiness is associated with environmental preservation or degradation across countries. Using qualitative and quantitative analyses, the study observes that culture and ethics have positive impacts upon environmental preservations, and happiness and environmental have unidirectional relationships, from happiness to carbon emission.