关键词: 幸福感, 环境行为, 环境关心, IV Probit模型

Abstract: Happiness, as being of the ultimate goal of economic development, a large body of literature has documented on the factors contributing to the people’s life happiness. However, their related reverse effects has been much overlooked. To fill out this gap, this paper attempts to assess the effects of the residents’ subjective happiness on their environmental behaviors by introducing the unexpected part of sunshine as an instrument variable, and at the same time carries out a preliminary investigation for the influential mechanism based on the China General Social Survey in 2010. The results show that the residents’ subjective happiness displays a significant effect on their environmental behaviors in such a way that the enhancement of the residents’ happiness can increase the likelihood for them to participate in the environmental activities. As a result, the sensitivity level of the residents’ environmental concerns can be viewed as a primary mechanism for residents’ happiness to contribute to their environment behaviors. In addition, the level of income increase enables to enhance the occurrences for residents to participate in both private and public environment behaviors. Therefore, the economic transformation aimed for improving people’s livelihood and subjective happiness can be regarded as an important approach for solving the conflicts between economic development and environment protection.

Key words: Happiness, Environmental Behavior, Environmental Concern, IV Probit Model