Curtailment of Civil Liberties and Subjective Life Satisfaction

Lisa Windsteiger (), Michael Ahlheim and Kai Konrad
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Lisa Windsteiger: Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2022, vol. 23, issue 5, No 19, 2157-2170

Abstract: Abstract This analysis focuses on the lockdown measures in the context of the Covid-19 crisis in Spring 2020 in Germany. In a randomized survey experiment, respondents were asked to evaluate their current life satisfaction after being provided with varying degrees of information about the lethality of Covid-19. We use reactance as a measure of the intensity of a preference for freedom to explain the variation in the observed subjective life satisfaction loss. Our results suggest that it is not high reactance alone that is associated with large losses of life satisfaction due to the curtailment of liberties. The satisfaction loss occurs in particular in combination with receiving information about the (previously overestimated) lethality of Covid-19.

Keywords: Survey experiment; Covid-19; Life satisfaction; Reactance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Working Paper: Curtailment of Civil Liberties and Subjective Life Satisfaction (2020)
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DOI: 10.1007/s10902-021-00491-1

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