Life satisfaction predicted by different "recipes" (or sets) of personal values between 5 regions of the world in massive study of over 100,000 people; community, voluntary, satisfaction with finances, and exercise were common

Alternative Recipes for Life Satisfaction: Evidence from Five World Regions. Bruce Headey, Gisela Trommsdorff & Gert G. Wagner. Applied Research in Quality of Life, Mar 25 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11482-021-09937-3

Abstract: In most cross-national research on Life Satisfaction (LS) an implicit assumption appears to be that the correlates of LS are the same the world over; ‘one size fits all’. Using data from the World Values Survey (1999–2014), we question this assumption by assessing the effects of differing personal values/life priorities on LS in five world regions: the West, Latin America, the Asian-Confucian region, ex-Communist Eastern Europe, and the Communist countries of China and Vietnam. We indicate that differing values - traditional family values, friendship and leisure values, materialistic values, political values, prosocial and environmental values, and religious values – are endorsed to varying degrees in different parts of the world, and vary in whether they have positive or negative effects on LS. Personal values provide the basis for alternative ‘recipes’ affecting LS. By ‘recipes’ we mean linked set of values, attitudes, behavioural choices and domain satisfactions that have a positive or negative effect on LS. We estimate structural equation models which indicate that differing values-based recipes help to account for large, unexpected differences between mean levels of LS in the five world regions, compared with the levels ‘predicted’ by GDP per capita. In particular, the high priority given to traditional family and religious recipes in Latin America helps to account for unexpectedly high LS in that region. Deficits in prosocial attitudes and behaviours partly account for low LS in ex-Communist Eastern Europe.

Traditional Family Values

It is well known that married/partnered people are on average happier than unmarried/unpartnered people, and that a cohesive family and satisfaction with family life are closely related to high LS (Diener et al. 1999; Argyle 2001). It is a fairly obvious next step to show that strong commitment to family values is linked to above average LS (Inglehart et al. 2008; Schwarz 2012; Headey and Wagner 2018, 2019).

Friendship and Leisure Values

A well established finding in LS research is that people with good social networks and high levels of social interaction/participation in activities with friends and acquaintances are happier than average (Bradburn 1969; Diener et al. 1999; Argyle 2001; Headey et al. 2010a). In this paper we extend this line of inquiry by investigating links between endorsing friendship and leisure values, related attitudes and choices, and LS.

Materialistic Values

Diener and Seligman (2002) and Nickerson et al. (2003) reported that individuals who prioritise materialistic values - financial and career success - are less happy than their less materialistic countrymen/women. We replicated their results, analysing Australian, British and German panel data (Headey 2008; Headey et al. 2010b; Headey and Wagner 2018, 2019). We also found that materialists are less rather more satisfied than average with their income and financial situation. Ng and Diener (2014) reported that in low income countries people place high priority on material goals, whereas in high income countries material and non-material goals are about equally prioritised.

Political, Prosocial and Environmental Values1

Dunn et al. (2008), analysing experimental data, showed that prosocial, altruistic people who spent money that had been donated to them on other people, rather than themselves, gained greater satisfaction from their expenditure (see also Aknin et al. 2019).

Studies of volunteering – a clear form of prosocial behaviour – have shown that volunteers have above average levels of LS (Harlow and Cantor 1996; Thoits and Hewitt 2001). Our previous papers, based on panel data, have confirmed that people who prioritise prosocial values record well above average LS (Headey 2008; Headey et al. 2010a; Headey and Wagner 2018, 2019).

Religious Values

There has been extensive investigation of the hypothesis that religious people are more satisfied with life than non-religious people (Koenig and McCullogh 1998; Friedman and Martin 2011; Headey et al. 2010b). The evidence is not unambivalent, but on balance most studies show that the devoutly religious, especially if they attend church (mosque, synagogue etc) regularly, are more satisfied than average, and also live longer (Koenig and McCullogh 1998; Friedman and Martin 2011; Headey et al. 2014). The relationship between LS and longevity is almost certainly partly due to commitment to traditional family values, and also to a relatively healthy lifestyle with below average rates of smoking and alcohol consumption (Friedman and Martin 2011).

No Clear Values/Life Priorities

Emmons (1986, 1988, 1992) found that individuals who give relatively low ratings to all values have low LS. He inferred that just having values promotes LS by giving people a sense of purpose. Diener and Fujita (1995) investigated links between values/life goals and resources, finding that people have higher LS if they prioritise values/goals for which they have appropriate resources.