IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cge/wacage/397.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Advertising as a Major Source of Human Dissatisfaction: Cross-National Evidence on One Million Europeans

Author

Listed:
  • Michel, Chloe

    (University of Zurich, Switzerland.)

  • Sovinsky, Michelle

    (University of Mannheim, Germany, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London)

  • Proto, Eugenio

    (University of Bristol, IZA Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany)

  • Oswald, Andrew J.

    (University of Warwick, and CAGE research centre, IZA Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany)

Abstract

Advertising is ubiquitous in modern life. Yet might it be harmful to the happiness of nations? This paper blends longitudinal data on advertising with large-scale surveys on citizens’ well-being. The analysis uses information on approximately 1 million randomly sampled European citizens across 27 nations over 3 decades. We show that increases in national advertising expenditure are followed by significant declines in levels of life satisfaction. This finding is robust to adjustments for a range of potential confounders including the personal and economic characteristics of individuals, country fixed-effects year dummies, and business-cycle influences. Further research remains desirable. Nevertheless, our empirical results are some of the first to be consistent with the hypothesis that, perhaps by fostering unending desires, high levels of advertising may depress societal well-being.

Suggested Citation

  • Michel, Chloe & Sovinsky, Michelle & Proto, Eugenio & Oswald, Andrew J., 2019. "Advertising as a Major Source of Human Dissatisfaction: Cross-National Evidence on One Million Europeans," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 397, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    • Handle: RePEc:cge:wacage:397
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/manage/publications/397-2019_chloe_sovinsky_proto-oswald.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. David A. Griffith & Hannah S. Lee & Goksel Yalcinkaya, 2023. "Understanding the relationship between advertising spending and happiness at the country level," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(1), pages 128-150, February.
    2. Michael A. Wiles & Saeed Janani & Darima Fotheringham & Chadwick J. Miller, 2024. "A Longitudinal Examination of the Relationship Between National-Level Per Capita Advertising Expenditure and National-Level Life Satisfaction Across 76 Countries," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(3), pages 542-563, May.
    3. Mehta, Ritu & Bharadwaj, Apoorva, 2021. "Food advertising targeting children in India: Analysis and implications," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    4. Tomas Hanell, 2022. "Unmet Aspirations and Urban Malaise," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 83-103, November.
    5. Messner, Wolfgang, 2024. "Exploring multilevel data with deep learning and XAI: The effect of personal-care advertising spending on subjective happiness," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(1).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    adverts; status; life satisfaction; Easterlin Paradox; positive affect JEL Classification:;
    All these keywords.

    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:cge:wacage:397. 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: Jane Snape (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewaruk.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.