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Measuring Urban Parks On Subjective Well Being Of Urban Dwellers

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5.2. Estimation Results

We estimate five different specifications of the model presented in Section 3. Table 2 presents our estimation results of the effect of urban parks on subjective well-being of urban dwellers. In order to check the model consistency, we only include our key variable (i.e., urban park) in the first model as the simplest version, and then include income and socioeconomic variables in model 2 and model 3. Because the average happiness level has changed over time, as shown in Figure 4 and 5, we include time-specific fixed-effects in model 4. Finally in order to account for the unobserved characteristics at the local level, we include region-specific fixed-effects variables in model 5. Adding more variables improves the…show more content…
Housing ownership is found to be positively associated with individual subjective well-being, and people who live in an apartment are likely to be much happier than those who live in other types of housing. Females are found to be less happy than males. In terms of marital status, people who married are much happier than those who have never been married. People whose education level are higher than bachelor degree are much happier than less educated people. Finally, people who have a job are much happier than those who do not work.

However, unlike previous studies, the effect of age is negative, indicating that happiness levels of individual person lower as people getting old. This is an inconsistent result as compared to the previous studies arguing that life satisfaction is U-shaped in age. In many advanced countries in Europe, individual happiness level is at the lowest between a person’s mid-30s and early 50s because younger individuals have higher expectations than older adults. And then the happiness level increases as they age because the elderly learn to adapt to their abilities and thus become more realistic (Clark and Oswald, 1994; Landeghem, 2012). But, in the city of Seoul, happiness level is negatively associated with age. This is probably because of increasing concerns of physical health among older adults (Easterlin, 2006). Although further investigation with consideration of the local contexts is
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