IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dpr/wpaper/0926.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Activity, Time, and Subjective Happiness: An analysis Based on an Hourly Web survey

Author

Listed:
  • Hideaki Sakawa
  • Fumio Ohtake
  • Yoshiro Tsutsui

Abstract

This paper investigates how people's happiness depends on their current activities and on time. We conducted an hourly web survey, in which 70 students reported their happiness every hour on one day every month from December 2006 to February 2008. This method is an extension of the experience sampling method (ESM), since it uses mobile phones and personal computers. Our new method has the same strength of ESM in that it can measure real-time happiness data and thus avoid reflection and memory bias. Using our new method, we can obtain diurnal happiness data of respondents and also grasp their behavior at each of their reporting times over 14 months. Analyzing the data of our survey, we found (a) happiness significantly depends on activities, hours, and months, (b) while most of the time-variation of happiness is attributable to the time pattern of activities, happiness varies predictably with the hour in a day, even when activities are controlled for, and (c) while activities affect both genders similarly, there are gender gaps in the diurnal happiness pattern after controlling for activities.

Suggested Citation

  • Hideaki Sakawa & Fumio Ohtake & Yoshiro Tsutsui, 2015. "Activity, Time, and Subjective Happiness: An analysis Based on an Hourly Web survey," ISER Discussion Paper 0926, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    • Handle: RePEc:dpr:wpaper:0926
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iser.osaka-u.ac.jp/library/dp/2015/DP0926.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Doherty, Sean T. & Lemieux, Christopher J. & Canally, Culum, 2014. "Tracking human activity and well-being in natural environments using wearable sensors and experience sampling," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 83-92.
    2. Jonathan Gruber & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2006. "Do Cigarette Taxes Make Smokers Happier?," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Yew-Kwang Ng & Lok Sang Ho (ed.), Happiness and Public Policy, chapter 6, pages 109-146, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Jeremy Hunter, 2003. "Happiness in Everyday Life: The Uses of Experience Sampling," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 185-199, June.
    4. Daniel Kahneman & Alan B. Krueger, 2006. "Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 3-24, Winter.
    5. Ed Diener & Louis Tay, 2014. "Review of the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM)," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 116(1), pages 255-267, March.
    6. Frey, Bruno S. & Benesch, Christine & Stutzer, Alois, 2007. "Does watching TV make us happy?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 283-313, June.
    7. Louis Tay & David Chan & Ed Diener, 2014. "The Metrics of Societal Happiness," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 117(2), pages 577-600, June.
    8. Christie Scollon & Chu Kim-Prieto & Ed Diener, 2003. "Experience Sampling: Promises and Pitfalls, Strengths and Weaknesses," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 5-34, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daly, Michael & Delaney, Liam & Doyle, Orla & Fitzpatrick, Nick & O'Farrelly, Christine, 2014. "Can Early Intervention Policies Improve Well-being? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial," SIRE Discussion Papers 2015-03, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    2. Stutzer, Alois & Frey, Bruno S., 2010. "Recent Advances in the Economics of Individual Subjective Well-Being," IZA Discussion Papers 4850, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Shang Ha & Seokho Kim, 2013. "Personality and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from South Korea," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 111(1), pages 341-359, March.
    4. Yoshiro Tsutsui & Fumio Ohtake, 2011. "Asking About Changes in Happiness in a Daily Web Survey," ISER Discussion Paper 0813, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    5. Lianne P. Vries & Bart M. L. Baselmans & Meike Bartels, 2021. "Smartphone-Based Ecological Momentary Assessment of Well-Being: A Systematic Review and Recommendations for Future Studies," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(5), pages 2361-2408, June.
    6. Bruno Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2010. "Happiness and public choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 144(3), pages 557-573, September.
    7. Daly, Michael & Delaney, Liam & Doyle, Orla & Fitzpatrick, Nick & O'Farrelly, Christine, 2014. "Can Early Intervention Policies Improve Well-being? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial," 2007 Annual Meeting, July 29-August 1, 2007, Portland, Oregon TN 2015-03, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    8. Odermatt, Reto & Stutzer, Alois, 2017. "Subjective Well-Being and Public Policy," IZA Discussion Papers 11102, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Abel Brodeur, 2012. "Smoking, Income and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Smoking Bans," Working Papers halshs-00664269, HAL.
    10. Hajdu, Tamás & Hajdu, Gábor, 2011. "A hasznosság és a relatív jövedelem kapcsolatának vizsgálata magyar adatok segítségével [Examining the relation of utility and relative income using Hungarian data]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(1), pages 56-73.
    11. Flores, Gabriela & Ingenhaag, Michael & Maurer, Jürgen, 2015. "An anatomy of old-age disability: Time use, affect and experienced utility," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 150-160.
    12. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2009. "Should National Happiness be Maximized?," Chapters, in: Amitava Krishna Dutt & Benjamin Radcliff (ed.), Happiness, Economics and Politics, chapter 14, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Jiri Zuzanek & Tamara Zuzanek, 2015. "Of Happiness and of Despair, Is There a Measure? Time Use and Subjective Well-being," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 839-856, August.
    14. Steven D Levitt, 2021. "Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(1), pages 378-405.
    15. Matthew D Rablen, 2012. "The promotion of local wellbeing: A primer for policymakers," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 27(3), pages 297-314, May.
    16. Almudena Sevilla & Jose Gimenez-Nadal & Jonathan Gershuny, 2012. "Leisure Inequality in the United States: 1965–2003," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(3), pages 939-964, August.
    17. Friedel Bolle & Simon Kemp, 2009. "Can We Compare Life Satisfaction Between Nationalities? Evaluating Actual and Imagined Situations," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 397-408, February.
    18. Gamze Dane & Aloys Borgers & Tao Feng, 2019. "Subjective Immediate Experiences during Large-Scale Cultural Events in Cities: A Geotagging Experiment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-19, October.
    19. DECANCQ, Koen & FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2014. "Inequality, income, and well-being," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014018, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    20. Yonas Alem & Jonathan Colmer, 2015. "Consumption smoothing and the welfare cost of uncertainty," GRI Working Papers 118b, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

    More about this item

    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:dpr:wpaper:0926. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Librarian (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isosujp.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.