IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/econwp/080.html

Reported happiness, fast and slow

Author

Listed:
  • Raphael Studer
  • Rainer Winkelmann

Abstract

In this paper, we test how reporting behaviors (response time, cognitive effort, questionnaire order) affect reported happiness in a large Dutch internet panel survey. We find that slower responses and higher cognitive effort reduce reported happiness. Moreover, in multivariate happiness equations, these factors moderate the estimated effect of income on happiness, while no interaction effects are found for other determinants of happiness. As a consequence, relative marginal effects may not be invariant to reporting circumstances.

Suggested Citation

  • Raphael Studer & Rainer Winkelmann, 2012. "Reported happiness, fast and slow," ECON - Working Papers 080, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:zur:econwp:080
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/62714/1/econwp080.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Van Landeghem, Bert, 2019. "Stable traits but unstable measures? Identifying panel effects in self-reflective survey questions," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 83-95.
    2. Shuo Liu & Nick Netzer, 2023. "Happy Times: Measuring Happiness Using Response Times," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(12), pages 3289-3322, December.
    3. Lucía Gómez-Balcácer & Noelia Somarriba Arechavala & Patricia Gómez-Costilla, 2023. "The Importance of Different Forms of Social Capital for Happiness in Europe: A Multilevel Structural Equation Model (GSEM)," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 18(1), pages 601-624, February.
    4. Rubinstein, Ariel, 2012. "Response Time and Decision Making: A “Free” Experimental Study," Foerder Institute for Economic Research Working Papers 275782, Tel-Aviv University > Foerder Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Rainer Winkelmann & Raphael Studer, 2017. "Econometric Analysis of Ratings - with an Application to Health and Wellbeing," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 153(I), pages 1-13, March.
    6. Tineke Jonge & Ruut Veenhoven & Lidia Arends, 2014. "Homogenizing Responses to Different Survey Questions on the Same Topic: Proposal of a Scale Homogenization Method Using a Reference Distribution," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 117(1), pages 275-300, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zur:econwp:080. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Severin Oswald (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/seizhch.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.