The impact of a failed coup d’état on happiness, life satisfaction, and trust: the case of the plot in Turkey on July 15, 2016

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the impact of the failed coup d’état attempt in Turkey on 15 July 2016 on people’s happiness, life satisfaction, and trust and finds that the plot had a significant negative effect on all three variables. This paper is the first to show that coups d’état can have a significant adverse effect on people’s well-being, as in the case of terrorist attacks.

KEYWORDS:

• Happiness
• well-being
• trust
• life satisfaction
• coup d’état
• Turkey

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I31
• N95

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge funding for this research from Kadir Has University (Project No. 2016-BAP-02).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ See Eren and Aşıcı (2017) for a review of the determinants of happiness and Kayaoglu (2017) for a review of the determinants of trust.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Kadir Has University [2016-BAP-02].