Reversing the question: does subjective well-being affect family tourism expenditure?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Psychographic variables in the analysis of tourism expenditure are more extensively used and tracing a stronger relation to economic theory. However, provided by the official dataset widely, subjective well-being (SWB) is rarely used as an outcome. The purpose of this study is to examine how SWB affects family tourism spending. Robustness checks are applied to evaluate possible estimation bias and show that SWB has a positive relationship with probability of travelling. In addition, we attempt to account for circular causality by means of instrumental variable estimation and relaxation of the exclusion restriction. The empirical results show that high SWB increases tourism expenditure. Relevant differences among families with age, education and area of residence are also found. Finally, through mediation analysis, we find that the savings rate could weaken the influence of SWB. These results suggest that the savings rate imposes a threshold on household expenditure.