Environment and happinessnew evidence for Spain

Abstract

In this paper we study the impact of sustainability and environmental conditions on happiness in the Spanish regions with individual-level data from the European Social Survey, using an ordinal logit model. The main results of the paper are the following. First, after controlling for most of the socio-economic variables affecting happiness, we still find significant regional differences in subjective well-being or happiness. Second, these regional differences cannot be explained with the usual macroeconomic regional variables, such as per capita GDP or unemployment rate. However, we find that environmental variables, such as pollution, play a significant role in explaining regional differences in happiness. Furthermore, we also find significant variables of regional climate data on individual subjective well-being. Finally, and as expected, we find significant effect of different socio-economic variables on happiness, such as health, income and unemployment status among others.