Does solar activity affect human happiness?

Ladislav Krištoufek ()

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2018, vol. 493, issue C, 47-53

Abstract: We investigate the direct influence of solar activity (represented by sunspot numbers) on human happiness (represented by the Twitter-based Happiness Index). We construct four models controlling for various statistical and dynamic effects of the analyzed series. The final model gives promising results. First, there is a statistically significant negative influence of solar activity on happiness which holds even after controlling for the other factors. Second, the final model, which is still rather simple, explains around 75% of variance of the Happiness Index. Third, our control variables contribute significantly as well: happiness is higher in no sunspots days, happiness is strongly persistent, there are strong intra-week cycles and happiness peaks during holidays. Our results strongly contribute to the topical literature and they provide evidence of unique utility of the online data.

Keywords: Happiness; Solar activity; Sunspot numbers; Online data; Twitter (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:493:y:2018:i:c:p:47-53

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2017.10.031

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