Implications of happiness research for environmental economics

Heinz Welsch

Ecological Economics, 2009, vol. 68, issue 11, 2735-2742

Abstract: Using happiness data to study economic issues is a burgeoning field in recent economic literature. This paper shows that happiness research has considerable potential for environmental economic analysis. The paper discusses some implications of happiness research for environmental policy analysis, specifically with respect to the level of socially optimal environmental quality. It discusses evidence that consumer choice may be not utility maximizing and systematically distorted away from intrinsically motivated options, especially environment-friendly consumption. Finally, the paper describes how happiness data can be used in a novel approach to the monetary valuation of environmental quality and discusses the associated benefits and problems in relation to conventional methods.

Keywords: Environmental; economics; Happiness; Externalities; Environment-friendly; consumption; Environmental; valuation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921-8009(09)00229-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:68:y:2009:i:11:p:2735-2742

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().