Drawing on the distinction between envy and signaling effects in income comparison, this paper uses 307,465 observations for subjective well-being and its covariates from Germany, 1990 - 2009, to study whether the nature of income comparison has changed in the process of economic development,...

We develop and test a model of social comparison in which individuals gain status through pro-social behavior (competitive altruism) and in which they endogenously choose the reference group and associated reference standard involved in signaling status (reference group selection). In our...

Using subjective well-being data for more than 91,000 individuals in 30 OECD countries, 1990-2008, we study how people's implicit aversion towards inflation varies with income and other socio-economic characteristics. While inflation aversion decreases with income, it increases with the...

We use data on the subjective well-being (SWB) of more than 91,000 individuals in 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to assess the well-being effects of unemployment, inflation and national income growth. The relationships found are used to...

Large-scale social surveys typically elicit levels of happiness and/or life satisfaction. This paper studies how such reports of happiness and life satisfaction are related to measures of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). Major findings are the following: (1) PA and NA levels...

Immigration is a crucial issue in contemporary politics, and attitudes towards immigration are highly dispersed in many countries. We treat individuals' immigration friendliness (IF) as a feature of their self-image or identity and hypothesize that, similar to other pro-social self-images,...

Recent literature has found that individuals holding a greener self-image display higher levels of life satisfaction. We extend the single-country setting of that research to a transnational perspective and explore whether a relationship exists between green self-image (GSI) and life...

Organic food markets in developed countries have been rapidly expanding in recent years. Though expected health benefits are a major motive for buying organic food (OF), the health effects of consuming OF are uncertain. This study uses survey data from Germany, 2007, to explore the causal...

While early literature on electricity externalities was largely concerned with fossil fuel power generation and the associated emissions, nuclear accidents (Chernobyl, Fukushima) and the large-scale deployment of renewable energy facilities have spurred a wave of research on the externalities of...

Cognitions about climate change are of critical importance for climate change mitigation as they influence climate-relevant behaviors and the support of climate policy. Using about 30,000 observations from a large-scale representative survey from 23 European countries, this study provides two...