Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Becchetti, Leonardo
Author-Email: becchetti@economia.uniroma2.it 
Author-Name: Corrado, Luisa
Author-Email: lc242@econ.cam.ac.uk
Author-Name: Conzo, Pierluigi
Author-Email: pierluigi.conzo@unito.it   
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Turin
Author-Workplace-Homepage: http://www.est.unito.it/
Title: Sociability, Altruism and Subjective Well-Being.
Abstract: We provide non experimental evidence of the relevance of sociability on subjective wellbeing by investigating 
the determinants of life satisfaction on a large sample of Europeans aged above 50. We document that voluntary work, 
religious attendance, helping friends/neighbours and participation to community-related organizations affect positively 
and significantly life satisfaction. We illustrate the different impact that some sociability variables have on eudaimonic 
versus cognitive measures of subjective wellbeing. Our empirical findings discriminate among other regarding and self-regarding 
preferences as rationales explaining such behaviour. We document that different combinations between actions and motivations 
have different impact on life satisfaction thereby providing support for the relevance of these specific “contingent goods” 
and to the literature of procedural utility.
Our findings are confirmed in robustness checks including refinements of the dependent variable, instrumental 
variables and sensitivity an alysis on departures from the exogeneity assumption.
Length: 42 pages
Creation-Date: 2013-05
File-URL: http://www.est.unito.it/do/home.pl/Download?doc=/allegati/wp2013dip/wp_14_2013.pdf
File-Format: Application/PDF
Handle: RePEc:uto:dipeco:201314