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Happiness is greater in more scenic locations

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posted on 2023-06-09, 17:49 authored by Chanuki Illushka Seresinhe, Tobias Preis, George MackerronGeorge Mackerron, Helen Susannah Moat
Does spending time in beautiful settings boost people’s happiness? The answer to this question has long remained elusive due to a paucity of large-scale data on environmental aesthetics and individual happiness. Here, we draw on two novel datasets: first, individual happiness data from the smartphone app, Mappiness, and second, crowdsourced ratings of the “scenicness” of photographs taken across England from the online game Scenic-Or-Not. We find that individuals are happier in more scenic locations, even when we account for a range of factors such as the activity the individual was engaged in at the time, weather conditions and the income of local inhabitants. Crucially, this relationship holds not only in natural environments, but in built-up areas too, even after controlling for the presence of green space. Our results provide evidence that the aesthetics of the environments that policymakers choose to build or demolish may have consequences for our everyday wellbeing.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Scientific Reports

ISSN

2045-2322

Publisher

Springer Nature

Volume

9

Page range

4498

Department affiliated with

  • Economics Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2019-05-16

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2019-05-16

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2019-05-16

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