Influence of Freedom of Choice on Happiness

Somayeh Koohborfardhaghighi (), Christopher R. Summers (), Almas Heshmati () and Jörn Altmann
Additional contact information
Somayeh Koohborfardhaghighi: Deloitte FAS LLP
Christopher R. Summers: University of Missouri-St. Louis

No 15315, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The literature on happiness shows that there are many factors that influence a person’s happiness. Extending previous studies, we investigate the role of the freedom of choice as a key contributing construct in influencing a person’s happiness. We define two hypothetical sub-constructs for the freedom of choice to fully develop a model of happiness. We name those hypothetical sub-constructs (latent variables) as volitional and non-volitional choices, each of which is measured by a variety of indicators (observed variables). The selected indicators are mainly from the social dimensions of happiness within working and living environments, which affect the quality-of-life people enjoy. We use the structural equation modeling approach to test our model. We restrict our empirical studies to four East Asian countries, which are South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China. The obtained results of this study, confirm that happiness tends to be closely related to interpersonal connectedness and individuals’ experiences within shared relationships in certain countries. Our findings open new insights on how happiness can be considered as an emerging outcome of the interplay between personal characteristics and societal interactions. Findings of this study can be applied in empowering the cognitive dimension of social capital within an organization.

Keywords: hedonic and eudemonic approaches; freedom of choice; happiness; structural equation modelling; East Asia region; cognitive social capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C50 D71 E24 J24 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2022-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-mac and nep-sea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15315.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp15315

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().