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Trust and Well-Being
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This paper presents new evidence linking trust and subjective well-being, based primarily on data from the Gallup World Poll and cycle 17 of the Canadian General Social Survey (GSS17). Because several of the general explanations for subjective well-being examined here show large and significant linkages to both household income and various measures of trust, it is possible to estimate income-equivalent compensating differentials for different types of trust. Measures of trust studied include general social trust, trust in co-workers, trust in neighbours, and trust in police. In addition, some Canadian surveys and the Gallup World Poll ask respondents to estimate the chances that a lost wallet would be returned to them if found by different individuals, including neighbours, police and strangers. Our results reveal sufficiently strong linkages between trust and well-being to support much more study of how trust can be built and maintained, or repaired where it has been damaged. We therefore use data from the Canadian GSS17 to analyze personal and neighbourhood characteristics, including education, migration history, and mobility, that help explain differences in trust levels among individuals. New experimental data from Canada show that wallets are far more likely to be returned, even by strangers in large cities, than people expect.
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... Besides, a vast number of studies have measured the relationship between social capital and life satisfaction (i.e., subjective well-being), particularly focusing on Western societies (see, e.g., Bjørnskov, 2003;Elgar et al., 2011;Helliwell, 2002;Helliwell & Putnam, 2004;Helliwell & Wang, 2011;Portela et al., 2013). Although some pieces of the literature find a negative effect of social networks on wellbeing (Ingersoll-Dayton et al., 1997;Portes & Landolt, 1996), researchers generally confirm the positive impact of dimensions of social capital on the quality of life. ...
... Unlike previous studies that primarily focus on Western countries (see, e.g., Helliwell and Wang, 2011;Portela et al., 2013;Putnam, 2002;Knack & Keefer, 1997), our study denies the link between bridging social capital and both aspects of individual well-being. In more detail, both cooperation and distrust do not reveal any significant relationship with happiness as well as income level in the rural Vietnam society. ...
... Questions 1-4 were adopted from Naef and Schupp (2009), while Question 5 was adopted from Helliwell and Wang (2010). To avoid order effects, the sequence of these five questions was randomized. ...
Large amounts of evidence suggest that trust levels in a country are an important determinant of its macroeconomic growth. In this paper, we investigate one channel through which trust might support economic performance: through the levels of patience, also known as time preference in the economics literature. Following Gabaix and Laibson (2017), we first argue that time preference can be modelled as optimal Bayesian inference based on noisy signals about the future, so that it is affected by the perceived certainty of future outcomes. Drawing on neuroscience literature, we argue that the mechanism linking trust and patience could be facilitated by the neurotransmitter oxytocin. On the one hand, it is a neural correlate of trusting behavior. On the other, it has an impact on the brain's encoding of prediction error, and could therefore increase the perceived certainty of a neural representation of a future event. The relationship between trust and time preference is tested experimentally using the Trust Game. While the paper does not find a significant effect of trust on time preference or the levels of certainty, it proposes an experimental design that can successfully manipulate people's short-term levels of trust for experimental purposes.
... A higher frequency of giftgiving with neighbors and relatives stimulates social trust and creates a homogeneous living environment (Coffé & Geys, 2007). Previous studies have found a positive association between social trust and SWB (Akaeda, 2020;Helliwell & Wang, 2011;Jovanović, 2016;Rodríguez-Pose & von Berlepsch, 2014;Yamamura et al., 2015). Trust is associated with facilitating connections and cooperation, as well as with promoting social ties and health (Churchill & Farrell, 2017;Kim et al., 2011;Putnam, 1995). ...
Gift-giving consumption is an important part of household consumption and is closely linked to people’s welfare, particularly in rural China. By employing data from the China Family Panel Studies, this study investigates whether and how household gift-giving consumption affects subjective well-being in rural China. The findings suggest that such consumption has a significant and positive effect on the subjective well-being of rural residents in China, and social trust mediates the relationship between household gift-giving consumption and subjective well-being. Furthermore, the study conducts a robustness analysis based on various age and income groups, and the results demonstrate that gift-giving consumption has a significant positive effect on the subjective well-being of younger people, but no significant effect on the subjective well-being of middle-aged and elderly people. In addition, household gift-giving consumption significantly improves the subjective well-being of low-income people in rural China, but it does not have a statistically significant effect on high-income people. The findings of this study have some implications for policymakers.
... Trust can help individuals build and maintain close relationships and further have a higher level of perceived social support, to improve individual life satisfaction (Amati et al., 2018;Siedlecki et al., 2014;Tov & Diener, 2008). In addition, trust is considered one of the most powerful predictors of subjective well-being (Bai et al., 2019;Helliwell & Wang, 2011;Hudson 2006;Jovanovic, 2016;Leung et al., 2011), and life satisfaction is a key indicator of subjective well-being (Bajaj & Pande, 2016;Busseri, 2018;Diener & Diener, 1995;Proctor et al., 2008;Schimmack et al., 2002), which is in line with the findings of this study that trust is correlated with life satisfaction. In summary, individuals with higher narcissistic admiration showed higher levels of trust, which led to higher life satisfaction. ...
Life satisfaction is a widely-shared goal and a core theme in the field of positive psychology. From the perspective of personality, some researchers have focused on the relationship between narcissism and life satisfaction, but there is a lack of research on the underlying process between them. This study aimed to examine the relationship between narcissism and life satisfaction based on the narcissistic admiration and rivalry concept (NARC) model and explored the mediating roles of general trust and positive emotions. In addition, to avoid confusion between the concepts of narcissism and self-esteem, this study measured and controlled for self-esteem in the mediation model test. In the current study, college students completed the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire, General Trust Scale, Positive Emotions of Scale of Positive and Negative Experience Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale. Ultimately, a total of 912 participants were analyzed, including 398 males (43.6%) and 506 females (55.5%) (Mage = 19.58 years, SD = 1.35 years). The results showed that narcissistic admiration had a positive indirect effect on life satisfaction, while narcissistic rivalry had a negative indirect effect on life satisfaction. General trust and positive emotions were two mediators of the relationship between narcissism and life satisfaction. These findings suggest that different dimensions of narcissism have different effects on life satisfaction. Our findings have significant practical and theoretical implications for enhancing the life satisfaction of individuals with narcissistic tendencies.
... Age has a U-shaped relationship with happiness and LS in most of the studies (see Frey and Stutzer, 2000;Blanchflower and Oswald, 2004;Helliwell and Wang, 2011;Ngoo et al., 2015), and some studies found the non-linear relationship of age with SWB (Wunder et al., 2013;Proto and Rustichini, 2015). Relationship of family size, number of children, and marital status with SWB have also been considered vastly in previous literature as it affects teenage childbearing, educational attainment, and adult earnings. ...
One of the goals of happiness research is to identify the key factors that influence it. Therefore, the present research is designed to examine the determining factors of subjective wellbeing (SWB) in Pakistan. The present research is conducted by collecting the data of 1,566 households in Punjab, Pakistan, using the ordered logit and tobit model. The findings of this research confirm that income, education, government effectiveness, no perceived corruption, and perceived institutional quality improve wellbeing, while lower trust in family and friends, poor health status, living on rent, and dissatisfaction with the services of hospitals lower the level of wellbeing. But individuals with more social ties, who face barriers in health services, live more happily satisfied with their lives. Crime victimization and worrisome terrorism also lower the level of SWB. Findings of research strongly emphasize policymakers and government institutions to improve their quality and take essential measures for improving the governance structure.
The associations among the frequency and quality of social interactions and in-the-moment and global well-being have been well-documented. Fewer studies explore whether the content of social interactions is associated with well-being using experimental methods. Drawing from the communicate bond belong theory, seven candidate communication episodes and behaviors were identified. In three studies, participants ( N Study 1 = 347, N Study 2 = 310, N Study 3 = 250) were randomly assigned to engage in one of these communication episodes or behaviors and then completed end-of-day measures of well-being. Compared to participants in the control groups, participants engaging in candidate behaviors experienced increased well-being. MANCOVA results from all studies suggest the frequency of engaging in candidate behaviors was associated with increased well-being. A mini-meta-analysis found a weighted average effect size of d = 0.255. Results suggest that engaging in as little as one communication behavior with one friend in a day can improve daily well-being.
We examine the institutional drivers of subjective well‐being (SWB). Using a repeated cross‐sectional data set from the Philippines spanning three decades, we estimate the relationship of people's trust in public institutions and SWB, measured in terms of people's satisfaction with their lives. Our findings, based on estimates which control for a range of individual‐level characteristics, show that people's trust in public institutions is strongly associated with their well‐being. In particular, a great deal of trust in the Police, Congress, and Judiciary is positively associated with people's satisfaction with their lives while a lack of trust in Congress, Civil Service, and Executive is negatively related to life satisfaction. Findings are discussed vis‐à‐vis their implications for Philippine public policy and to well‐being‐oriented policy regimes more generally. 我们研究了主观幸福感（SWB）的制度驱动因素。通过使用一项来自菲律宾的、时间跨度为30年的重复横截面数据集，我们估计了人民对公共机构的信任与主观幸福感之间的关系，这种关系以人民的生活满意度为衡量标准。基于用于控制一系列个人层面特征的估计值，我们的研究结果表明，人民对公共机构的信任与其幸福感强烈相关。特别地，对警察、国会和司法机构的高度信任与人民的生活满意度呈正相关，而对国会、政府部门和行政部门的信任缺乏则与生活满意度呈负相关。探讨了研究结果对菲律宾公共政策的影响以及在更广程度上对以福祉为导向的政策制度的启示 Examinamos los impulsores institucionales del bienestar subjetivo (SWB). Utilizando un conjunto de datos transversales repetidos de Filipinas que abarca tres décadas, estimamos la relación de la confianza de las personas en las instituciones públicas y SWB, medida en términos de satisfacción de las personas con sus vidas. Nuestros hallazgos, basados en estimaciones que controlan una variedad de características a nivel individual, muestran que la confianza de las personas en las instituciones públicas está fuertemente asociada con su bienestar. En particular, una gran confianza en la Policía, el Congreso y el Poder Judicial se asocia positivamente con la satisfacción de las personas con sus vidas, mientras que la falta de confianza en el Congreso, el Servicio Civil y el Ejecutivo se relaciona negativamente con la satisfacción con la vida. Los hallazgos se discuten frente a sus implicaciones para la política pública filipina y para los regímenes de políticas orientados al bienestar en general.
Subjective well-being (SWB) has attracted a considerable amount of attention in a wide variety of research areas, and previous research has demonstrated the existence of well-being inequality according to social stratification, such as class and status. However, whether class and status have distinctive effects on SWB, even when each is controlled, and whether class and status inequalities in SWB vary depending on social trust remain ambiguous. To fill these gaps, this study focuses on both class and status—two dimensions of social stratification—to examine whether social trust affects class and status disparities in SWB. This analysis employs repeated cross-sectional international comparative data from nine waves of the European Social Survey (ESS) from 2002 to 2019 and a two-way fixed-effects model to examine the moderation effects of social trust on the impacts of the two dimensions of social stratification on SWB. Via an international comparative analysis, this study reveals that class and status have significant positive effects on SWB even after each factor is controlled and that social trust has significant moderation effects on the association between social stratification and SWB. These results indicate that the two aspects of social stratification, i.e., class and status, have differing impacts on SWB and that social trust reduces well-being inequality according to social stratification.
Social surveys on wellbeing have been increasingly including measures of subjective wellbeing, alongside more often used objective ones, as they show the importance of a more comprehensive approach to understanding what constitutes good and happy lives. This paper relies on the European Social Survey (ESS) data from Round 4 (2008) and Round 9 (2018 ESS. 2018. Methodology Overview. https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/methodology/ (19 February 2021) [Google Scholar]) to analyze and compare subjective wellbeing (SWB) in rural and urban areas of eight Central European countries: Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, and Slovakia. Based on available ESS items, we have constructed a more concise version of the VanderWeele et al.’s Flourishing Index, which we termed the Subjective Wellbeing Index (SWI), and which includes the following domains: (1) happiness and life satisfaction, (2) mental and physical health, and (3) financial and material stability. The main results indicate that all eight CE countries have relatively high and improving SWI scores, but stable relational position over the ten-year period. When looking at the rural-urban subsamples, all countries scored higher on the SWI in urban areas in 2008, with significant improvements in the rural areas of more affluent EU countries by 2018 as Austrian, Czech and German rural areas exhibited higher SWI scores than their urban counterparts.
This study aims to categorize the happiness group of Millennials and
Generation Z (MZ Generations) and explore the characteristics of each
group. To do this, we employed Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to classify
happiness groups and explore each group’s characteristics and influential
factors. The happiness group is classified into three subgroups according
to happiness level, and the MZ generations in each group have different
sociological and demographic characteristics. In addition, we analyzed
the influential factors that contribute to the happiness of MZ generations
through an ordered logit model. The analysis of happiness influences
confirms that household factors and personal characteristics such as age,
marital status, and occupation affect young people’s happiness levels. Based
on these results, this study calls for suitable urban policies to respond to
various demands, considering young people’s different sociological and
demographic characteristics.
Although membership in voluntary associations has been presumed to be a central element in the building of social capital, micro-level knowledge about whether and how voluntary associations make their members more trusting and cooperative has been lacking. The link between trust and involvement in associations in Germany and Sweden was explored by means of a questionnaire concerning traits of individuals and of the associational groups to which they belong. The analysis of the resulting data set considered the extent to which various group characteristics (such as demographic diversity, in-group trust, and engagement level) are related to the generalized trust of the members. The results indicate that more diverse, more engaged voluntary associations, and those with weak ties, indeed accommodate more trusting people. In particular, time spent in groups with foreigners, or in groups with weaker ties, affects the generalized trust levels of the members.
The conceptualization and measurement of fear of crime have received considerable attention in the research literature. Nevertheless,
most sample surveys use indicators that only tap a general, cognitive assessment of safety — assumed to represent fear of
violence. This article examines whether there are conceptually and empirically distinct dimensions of fear of crime by comparing
the micro- and macrolevel antecedents of such a general, cognitive “fear” — which we call “perceived risk” — with those for
a more emotionally based, burglary-specific fear. Hierarchical logistic regression models for both types of fear are presented.
Some similarities were found between fear and risk in terms of various predictors, but results generally provide further empirical
evidence that the two constructs are quite distinct. At the individual-level, the effect of gender is different across models,
and routine-activities variables are somewhat better predictors of burglary-specific fear in comparison to risk perception.
At the contextual level, neighborhood integration serves to diminish respondents' perceptions of neighborhood danger, yet
this variable is positively related to burglary-specific fear.
The case is made for implementing national accounts of well-being to help policy makers and individuals make better decisions. Well-being is defined as people's evaluations of their lives, including concepts such as life satisfaction and happiness, and is similar to the concept of 'utility' in economics. Measures of well-being in organizations, states, and nations can provide people with useful information. Importantly, accounts of well-being can help decision makers in business and government formulate better policies and regulations in order to enhance societal quality of life. Decision makers seek to implement policies and regulations that increase the quality of life, and the well-being measures are one useful way to assess the impact of policies as well as to inform debates about potential policies that address specific current societal issues. This book reviews the limitations of information gained from economic and social indicators, and shows how the well-being measures complement this information. Examples of using well-being for policy are given in four areas: health, the environment, work and the economy, and social life. Within each of these areas, examples are described of issues where well-being measures can provide policy-relevant information. Common objections to using the well-being measures for policy purposes are refuted. The well-being measures that are in place throughout the world are reviewed, and future steps in extending these surveys are described. Well-being measures can complement existing economic and social indicators, and are not designed to replace them.