Sociability, altruism and well-being
基于50岁以上欧洲人的数据，研究了社交活动（如志愿服务、宗教活动、帮助他人）对生活满意度的积极影响，并发现不同行为与动机的组合效果不同。
We provide non-experimental evidence of the relevance of sociability to subjective well-being by investigating the determinants of life satisfaction on a sample of Europeans aged above 49. Departing from the neoclassical Homo economicus paradigm of human behaviour, we document that voluntary work, religious attendance, helping friends/neighbours and participation in community-related organisations affect life satisfaction positively and significantly. Moreover, different combinations between actions and motivations generate differential effects on life satisfaction, thereby providing support to the importance of these specific ‘contingent goods’ and to the literature of procedural utility. Our empirical findings are confirmed in robustness checks including refinements of the dependent variable, instrumental variables and sensitivity analysis on departures from the exogeneity assumption.