Well-Being, Context, and Everyday Activities in Space and Time

Abstract

Against the background of increased interest in subjectively experienced well-being in economics, psychology, and the social sciences, this article analyzes how such well-being is associated with geographical context, social contacts, and life circumstances. The empirical analysis of data collected in Hong Kong is used to elaborate and support two main claims. The first is that geography matters to not only overall well-being but also momentary well-being and that researchers should be careful to specify the influence of geographical context correctly. We therefore employ an approach that is informed by various strands of time–geographical thought and find that life satisfaction is associated more strongly with geographical context than is momentary well-being. Second, we confirm positive relations between social contacts and experienced well-being but extend earlier research by showing that these relations stretch across multiple timescales and depend to some extent on the duration of an activity episode and with whom the activity episode is undertaken. This means that the use of simple indicators of social capital is inadequate for making the complex linkages between well-being and people's social contacts understandable in empirical research.

在经济学、心理学与社会学对主观经验的福祉有着逐渐增加的兴趣之际, 本文分析主观福祉如何与地理脉络、社会接触及生命境况有关。我将运用自香港取得的数据之经验分析, 说明、并支持以下两个主要论点。首先, 地理不仅关乎总体的福祉, 亦关乎短暂的福祉, 研究者因此必须小心且正确地标明地理脉络的影响。我们因而运用由诸多时间—地理思想所构成的方法, 并发现相较于短暂的福祉而言, 生活满意度与地理脉络更加相关。再者, 我们证实社会接触与所经历的福祉之间的正向关係, 并进一步展现这些关係跨越多重时间尺度、并在部分程度上取决于活动的持续时期以及和谁一起从事活动, 藉此延伸过去既有的研究。而这意味着在经验研究中运用简单的社会资本指标, 并不足以让福祉和人类社会接触之间的复杂连结能够被理解。

Frente a los antecedentes del creciente interés por el bienestar experimentado subjetivamente en economía, psicología y las ciencias sociales, este artículo analiza cómo el bienestar está asociado al contexto geográfico, los contactos sociales y las circunstancias de la vida. El análisis empírico de datos recogidos en Hong Kong es utilizado para elaborar y respaldar dos reclamos principales. El primero es que la geografía importa no sólo para el bienestar en general sino también para el bienestar momentáneo y que los investigadores deben tener cuidado en especificar correctamente la influencia del contexto geográfico. Utilizamos, en consecuencia, un enfoque informado desde varios hilos de tiempo-pensamiento geográfico y hallamos que la satisfacción de la vida está más fuertemente asociada con el contexto geográfico de como lo está el bienestar momentáneo. Segundo, confirmamos relaciones positivas entre los contactos sociales y el bienestar experimentado, pero ampliamos la investigación precedente al mostrar que estas relaciones se extienden a través de múltiples escalas de tiempo y dependen en alguna medida de la duración de un episodio de actividad y de con quién se emprende ese episodio de actividad. Esto significa que el uso de indicadores simples de capital social es inadecuado para establecer los complejos vínculos entre el bienestar y los contactos sociales del pueblo según se entienden en investigación empírica.

Key Words:

• accessibility
• Hong Kong
• social contacts
• time–geography
• well-being.

关键词:

• 可及性
• 香港
• 社会接触
• 时间地理
• 福祉。

Palabras clave:

• accesibilidad
• Hong Kong
• contactos sociales
• tiempo-geografía
• bienestar

Notes

¹This approach to subjective well-being is commonly called hedonic but it is slightly broader as cognitive evaluations of how good life is—life satisfaction—are often used in empirical research. Recently there has also been a rapprochement between hedonic and eudaimonic perspectives in psychology (Diener et al. 2010).

²The HK-SAR was established on 1 July 1997 when its sovereignty was transferred from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China after about 150 years of British rule of the territory.

³The chi-square statistic is 1682.9 and statistically different from zero (p < 0.001). Because this is common with SEM analysis with more than 200 cases, we can disregard this statistic (which is done quite often in the SEM community).

⁴There is a statistically significant (p < 0.05), positive direct effect of accessibility on day experience, which is to some extent canceled out by the indirect effect via life satisfaction. The direct effect is difficult to explain and we are tempted to consider it a contingency that is specific to the utilized data.

⁵Future research would benefit from employing more refined indicators than we had available of who or what is present—including nature and green space—in a particular place at a specific time, of that site's atmosphere, of the sociospatial inequalities characterizing that site, and of differences between the social characteristics of that site and the social identity of the persons whose well-being is examined. It should also experiment with different zonal classification schemes and with defining explanatory variables at multiple geographical scales.