Giving more enhances your happiness: Evidence from Indonesia
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Previous studies revealed that consuming activities and spending money to meet needs can improve individuals’ happiness. Our study showed that spending money, not for personal needs also has a big impact on individuals’ well-being. We used 26,464 observations of 4th and 5th waves of the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) to predict the expenditures for non-personal needs (known as prosocial expenditure) on one's subjective well-being. The estimation result of the probit model showed that pro-social expenditure had a positive correlation with subjective well-being. On average, those who spend more on charity are happier than people who spend less. We also found that prosocial expenditure among Muslim and non-Muslim observations had different effects on happiness and life satisfaction.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Aknin, L. B., Dunn, E. W., Helliwell, J. F., Biswas-Diener, R., Nyende, P., Barrington-Leigh, C. P., Burns, J., Kemeza, I., Ashton-James, C. E. & Norton, M. I. (2013). Prosocial spending and well-being: Cross-cultural evidence for a psychological universal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Aknin, L. B., Dunn, E. W. & Norton, M. I. (2012). Happiness Runs in a Circular Motion: Evidence for a Positive Feedback Loop between Prosocial Spending and Happiness. Journal of Happiness Studies.
Aknin, L. B., Sandstrom, G. M., Dunn, E. W. & Norton, M. I. (2011). It’s the recipient that counts: Spending money on strong social ties leads to greater happiness than spending on weak social ties. PLoS ONE.
Andreoni, J. (1989). Giving with Impure Altruism: Applications to Charity and Ricardian Equivalence. Journal of Political Economy.
Andreoni, J. (1990). Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving. The Economic Journal.
BAZNAS. (2021). During pandemic 2020, fund collecting of BAZNAS raise 30 percent. 1–8.
Chang, W. C. (2009). Social capital and subjective happiness in Taiwan. International Journal of Social Economics.
Chen, X., Tian, L. & Huebner, E. S. (2020). Bidirectional Relations Between Subjective Well-Being in School and Prosocial Behavior Among Elementary School-Aged Children: A Longitudinal Study. Child and Youth Care Forum, 49(1), 77–95.
Choi, N. G. & Kim, J. (2011). The effect of time volunteering and charitable donations in later life on psychological wellbeing. Ageing and Society.
Choi, N. G., Kim, J. & Choi, N. G. (2015). The effect of time volunteering and charitable The effect of time volunteering and charitable donations in later life on psychological wellbeing. 2011, 590–610.
Dolan, P., Peasgood, T. & White, M. (2008). Do we really know what makes us happy? A review of the economic literature on the factors associated with subjective well-being. Journal of Economic Psychology.
Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B. & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science.
Eisenberg, N. & Miller, P. A. (1987). The Relation of Empathy to Prosocial and Related Behaviors. In Psychological Bulletin.
Falk, A. & Graeber, T. (2020). Delayed negative effects of prosocial spending on happiness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(12), 6463–6468.
Gherghel, C., Nastas, D., Hashimoto, T. & Takai, J. (2019). The relationship between frequency of performing acts of kindness and subjective well-being: A mediation model in three cultures. Current Psychology.
Harbaugh, W. T., Mayr, U. & Burghart, D. R. (2007). Neural responses to taxation and voluntary giving reveal motives for charitable donations. Science.
Junaidi, E. & Rizkiyah, P. D. (2013). Does contract type influence the Zakat , Infaq and Shadaqah donation of Islamic Microfinance customers ? Case study of Baitul Maal Wat Tamwil. 8th Conference on Islamic Economics and Finance.
Kim, M. S. O., Kim, H. Y. E. W. O. N., Cha, K. H. O. & Lim, J. (2007). What makes koreans happy?: exploration on the structure of happy life among korean adults. 265–286.
Lai, W., Yang, Z., Mao, Y., Zhang, Q., Chen, H. & Ma, J. (2020). When do good deeds lead to good feelings? Eudaimonic orientation moderates the happiness benefits of prosocial behavior. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(11), 1–12.
Miles, A., Andiappan, M., Upenieks, L. & Orfanidis, C. (2021). Using prosocial behavior to safeguard mental health and foster emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: A registered report protocol for a randomized trial. PLoS ONE, 16(1 January), 1–20.
Online Giving Report. (2018).
Perbawa, A. & Abdullah, H. (2016). Determinant Factors of Awareness for Paying Zakat on Baznas, Indonesia. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Perbawa, A. & Abdullah, H. (2018). Determinant Factors of Awareness for Paying Zakat on Baznas, Indonesia. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Song, J., Gu, C. & Zuo, B. (2019). Effect of charitable behavior on life satisfaction: A parallel multivariable mediation model. Social Behavior and Personality, 47(3).
Spermann, A. (2009). The Probit Model: a Learning Module. University of Freiburg.
UNDIP & BAZNAS. (2018). Unlocking The Potential of Zakat and Other Forms of Islamic Finance To Achieve the SGDs in IndonesiaNo Title. UNDIP and BAZNAS.
Webb, D. & Wong, J. (2014). Exploring Antecedents of Charitable Giving and Their Impact on Subjective Well-Being in Singapore. 65–87.
Weinstein, N. & Ryan, R. M. (2010). When Helping Helps: Autonomous Motivation for Prosocial Behavior and Its Influence on Well-Being for the Helper and Recipient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Zhang, W., Chen, M., Xie, Y. & Zhao, Z. (2018). Prosocial Spending and Subjective Well-Being: The Recipient Perspective. Journal of Happiness Studies, 19(8), 2267–2281.