Open AccessAre there heterogeneous impacts of social support on subjective well-being?
Author(s) -
Xiaobing Wang,
Qingqing Hu,
Mark Xu
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
national accounting review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2689-3010
DOI - 10.3934/nar.2021019
Subject(s) - generosity , world values survey , subjective well being , psychology , social support , democracy , multilevel model , panel data , general social survey , survey data collection , social psychology , well being , demographic economics , economics , political science , happiness , statistics , mathematics , machine learning , politics , computer science , law , econometrics , psychotherapist
Subjective well-being is a global health issue exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Social support has a positive impact on subjective well-being, however, the level of impact and the regulatory mechanism of social support on subjective well-being with reference to economic and cultural differences is unknown. Based on the Gallup survey data, a panel fixed effect model is constructed to examine the heterogeneity and regulatory mechanisms of social support on subjective well-being according to country-based economic and cultural matrix. Our findings show that, first, economic differences cause heterogeneous influence of social support on subjective well-being. Specifically, high-income countries have positive impact of social support on subjective well-being; whereas the lower ones have no significant influence. Secondly, cultural differences also cause heterogeneous impact, i.e. generosity of cultural characteristics regardless of high or low level in countries has a significant positive impact on subjective well-being, however, the degree of impact varies and is associated with level of generosity. Thirdly, a cross examination of heterogeneous moderating effect shows that democracy and freedom have a significant positive adjustment effect in both high and low generosity culture-characterized countries. These findings are significant to shape the conception of economic dominated social support for well-being, with significant implication for balancing (or shifting) social and public health policy with economic support towards building generosity and democratic societies.