Community Happiness Research Articles

“Happy Together”: Effects of Brand Community Engagement on Customer Happiness

Because the pursuit of happiness is fundamental, humans perform a wide range of activities, including consumption, to lead a happy life. For marketers, findings from positive psychology suggest that customer happiness may arise through customer engagement. This article proposes a conceptual framework of customer happiness in brand communities and analyzes the effect of customer engagement on customer happiness, as well as on the ultimate outcomes of word of mouth and purchase intentions. Structural equation modeling provides a test of the model through an empirical study with 518 members from the online brand community for a German automotive brand. Customer engagement exerts a significant positive effect on customer happiness, which in turn increases positive word of mouth and purchase intentions. Therefore, marketing managers should invest in brand communities to engage customers and build and maintain their happiness and loyalty.

Toward a Flourishing Neighborhood: the Association of Happiness and Sense of Community

Although a substantial amount of literature has focused on correlates of happiness, a growing body of research has begun to look at how happiness affects certain life outcomes. Among these are the relationships we have with individuals and with the community itself. The aim of this study was to further this understanding by examining the association between happiness and sense of community (SOC). Data were collected from the monthly Florida Consumer Attitude Survey from 502 adult residents within a neighborhood setting. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to measure the effect of happiness on SOC above and beyond the influence of demographics, neighborhood characteristics, and reported health. Results indicated that age, income, number of years lived in the neighborhood, reported health, and happiness all significantly contributed to SOC, suggesting that happy people may be more connected to their neighborhoods. This relationship has implications for future research as SOC has been shown to be a catalyst for both individual social participation and neighboring as well as community level efficacy and social capital.

Residential Mobility Affects Self-Concept, Group Support, and Happiness of Individuals and Communities

Evidence across several studies leads to the conclusion that having moved and living in an unstable community are associated with some of psychology’s most central variables: happiness, self-concept, and altruism. We review evidence that mobile communities and mobile people have more individualistic self-concepts, identify with groups more conditionally, and support the local community less. People who moved as children have lower satisfaction with life—unless they are extraverted. We also show that extraverted US states are happier when they are mobile, and introverted states are happier when they are stable. We explain how mobility can have two different effects depending on whether we are talking about how many times people have moved (individual mobility) or what percent of the local population has moved (community mobility). Furthermore, regional and national differences in mobility help explain important regional and cultural psychological differences.

Gross National Happiness (GNH)

This theoretical commentary explores the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) and connects it with several central macromarketing concepts such as QoL, ethics, the common good, the purpose of market activity as well as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The paper portrays GNH as a normative concept that captures collective well-being; it categorizes GNH, at least from the standpoint of Western moral philosophy, as most closely aligned with classical utilitarianism, and it distinguishes GNH from QoL on the basis of its predominantly aspirational and subjective orientation. It asserts that GNH can be seen as one manifestation of the common good, and, in that manner can be perceived as a ‘more ethical’ conception of the purpose of business activity. Finally, it links GNH to promising areas of Macromarketing scholarship. One essential contribution of this commentary is that it differentiates subjective community happiness from more objective measures of QoL familiar to macromarketing studies.

Using emotion to evaluate our community: exploring the relationship between the affective appraisal of community residents and the community environment

ABSTRACTCommunities generate stimuli that elicit emotional reactions from residents. The purpose of this research is to elicit resident perceptions of their community environments and to identify the set of key factors that are perceived as constituting this environment. These factors mainly refer to the outdoor environment, as many studies have found that indoor living conditions do not factor significantly into resident perceptions of their community environment. The method comprised a survey and analysis of 473 residents based in 5 communities in southern Taiwan. The results indicated a positive effect of the community environment on the affective appraisal of community residents. The results also indicated that both the material and perceptive environments should be considered when planning and creating happy communities. Impact of the context aspect was found to predominate when the effect sizes for the physical environment and service function aspects were similar. Green space, layout, aesthetics, and streetscape in the aspect of physical environment; and transport service, social welfare service, and recreational service in the aspect of service function were all correlated with affective appraisal. Effect sizes ranged from small to medium. Similarly, physical environment evaluation, social environment, and time in the aspect of context were all correlated with affective appraisal, with medium effect sizes. Furthermore, the four factors of layout, traffic function, social environment, and time respectively influenced the participants’ affective appraisals of pleasure, arousal, and control. These findings provide important new insights that urban and architectural professionals may use to create communities that are more livable and attractive for their residents.

Happiness, Media and Sustainability of Communities in Donkeaw, Mearim District, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Happiness, Media and Sustainability of Communities in Donkeaw, Mearim District, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Enhancing subjective well-being through strategic urban planning: Development and application of community happiness index

Sustainable development is practiced globally as a comprehensive strategy for promoting urban sustainability and well-being. Achieving sustainable development goals depends on the ability to monitor human well-being to track policy outcomes and the connection between ecosystem and human well-being. We developed a framework of community happiness index (CH-index) that fully integrates broad sustainability domains – human well-being and eco-environmental well-being sub-index along four sustainability dimensions (social, economic, environmental, and urban governance) to capture individual subjective perceptions of their experience of communities and development impact. The model was developed by aggregating its constituents using linear aggregation techniques based on subjective weightings using Delphi technique. A cross-sectional survey was conducted to validate the framework applicability using case study approach. The result shows that the case study Putrajaya displayed a good performance of eco-environmental well-being (M = 7.313) and Human Well-being (M = 6.534), moderate sustainability, and a medium-high level of community happiness (6.866) on 1–10 scale. The finding reveals that the level of community happiness depends on the existing level of sustainable urban development. The CH-index provides the planners with a new subjective well-being tool to help in-depth analysis for more targeted interventions and a baseline data to improve community happiness.

Integrated care: Third Sector engagement and co-responsibility

A presentation to illustrate how engaging with civic society and empowering people and communities can: - Better support families to live well in their communities, - Improve health outcomes and Health Related Quality of Life through exploiting community assets and - Promote a wider understanding of actions to tackle health inequalities through collaborative learning. Premise: Charities, community groups, social enterprises and voluntary organisations of all shapes and sizes already make significant impacts in areas like early intervention, prevention and care, and support for people with complex and multiple conditions. With the right support, there is scope for them to make even more of a difference. Background: Legislation to implement health and social care integration, passed by the Scottish Parliament in February 2014, came into force on April 1, 2016. This brings together health and social care services under one partnership arrangement for each local authority area. The Catalan government launched in February, 2014 a new strategy for implementing integrated care between health and social services. This strategy is community and population based, developing enabling drivers (such as ICT, shared commissioning, etc) but primarily establishing local partnerships for integration where all the providers (public, private and third sector...) are involved. Collaboration and engagement: Because of the development of integrated care partnership models the third sector (both voluntary and community organisations) are increasingly seen as having a pivotal locus in co-designing, co-producing and delivering resilient and sustainable care services. In addition, third sector organisations can and do play a leading role in establishing the context for wider community well-being. SCVO has collaborated with national and local care providers (public and third sector) to highlight this role through its Building Healthier and Happier Communities programme. BHHC is a fresh approach to improving the health and quality of life of people and communities across Scotland. It is national programme; delivered locally. The Taula del Tercer Sector, based on their civic engagement and solidarity with vulnerable groups and their willingness to contribute to the general interest, has collaborated with both national and regional authorities in Catalonia, has taken co-responsibility to become an active agent for promoting this transformation. Proposal: We are committed to a range of other work contributing to the integration agenda and the engagement of communities with the statutory services and (crucially) vice versa. Of increasing significance is the work we are leading on in achieving a step change in digital engagement and inclusion. Our presentation will touch on some of these initiatives, the “win/win” rationale for genuine collaboration and consider the level of, and reasons for success in cross sectoral engagement.

Analysis on the Effect between the Community Perception and Happiness: Focusing on the Participants of the Community Business in Chungcheongnam-do

Analysis on the Effect between the Community Perception and Happiness: Focusing on the Participants of the Community Business in Chungcheongnam-do

Happiness in Communities: How Neighborhoods, Cities and States Use Subjective Well-Being Metrics

This essay, the fourth and last of a series published by the<em> Journal of Social Change</em>, is intended as a tool for community organizers, local policy makers, researchers, students and others to incorporate subjective well-being indicators into their measurements and management of happiness and well-being in their communities, for policy purposes, for research and for other purposes. It provides case studies of community-based efforts in five different regions (São Paulo, Brazil; Bristol, United Kingdom; Melbourne, Australia; Creston, British Columbia, Canada; and Vermont, United States) that either developed their own subjective well-being index or used the Happiness Alliance’s survey instrument to measure happiness and well-being. The essay offers lessons to consider when using subjective well-being indicator survey instruments. Finally, the essay provides a process for measuring happiness using the Happiness Alliance’s survey instrument.

Sustainable City: Assessing the Community Happiness of Residents in Putrajaya Municipality Malaysia

With the recent establishment of linkages between characteristics of the community and subjective well-being of residents by a sociologist, the ability to design and monitor urban development that enables human and environmental well-being becomes necessary. Developing communities sustainably require resilient economic, environmental, social and governance systems. This study assesses community happiness based on perceived satisfaction of sustainable development interventions in urban areas. A sample of 400 residents was selected to complete the self-reported survey on specific items on a 10-point response scale (1 means “very dissatisfied” and 10 means “very satisfied”). The sample comprised of residents between 18 years of age and above who lived and works in the town, outside and identified with the communities in the city. The results show that the environmental well-being (M=7.69, SD=1.59), social well-being (M=6.96, SD=1.73), and urban governance (M=6.69, SD=1.61), and economic well-being (M=6.19, SD=2.01) respectively were positively perceived to contribute to the overall community happiness (M=6.88). The findings suggest that investments unto the dimensions could lead to a more optimistic outlook for sustainable community future. The study contributed to the literature on the connection between subjective well-being and sustainable development, and also the measure of community happiness in local context using subjective approach, particularly in Malaysia.

Pragmalinguistic Features of American Presidents’ Inaugural Addresses of the Last Century (1913-2013)

This paper studies the pragmalinguistic markers of the political discourse in American presidents’ inaugural addresses made from 1913 to 2013 and concentrates on the language units that reveal the potential of perlocutionary speech acts. The study analyzes the role of such domains of pragmalinguistics as deixis, reference, presupposition, cognitive structures in inaugural addresses, and their representation in speeches. The method of discourse-analysis, the method of contextual analysis, and the method of quantitative processing are used in the study. The means of deixis have several functions in these speech texts, providing some extra-linguistic information and additional meaning for the utterances. Firstly, the change of deictic center conveys a certain shift of attention and redirects the addressee’s thoughts. Secondly, the means of deixis represent presuppositions, ones which members of the public are unlikely to question since these presuppositions are explicitly referred to and the information provided includes people’s background assumptions. Thirdly, personal, temporal and spatial deixes are integrated in the actualization of the most important concept found in every speech of every American president – the concept of the “American nation”: deictic forms along with nouns with evaluative implications add to the pragmatic effect of the concept reflected in speech. Fourthly, the deictic means participate in the construction of a binary that juxtaposes “us” vs. “them”, typical of political utterances in the genre of inaugural addresses. A special form of reference constituting an important part of the concept of the “American nation” in inauguration addresses is precedent phenomena. Their main sources are the Bible, speeches of former politicians, texts of famous American documents. Reference to religious discourse and parts of national history familiar to everyone brings the feeling of joy to the public appealing to a basic national myth of a happy community. Thus means of deixis, presupposition and special type of reference are the characteristic of American inauguration speeches used for the purposes of strong pragmalinguistic effect. The dynamics of the usage of the precedent phenomena and other constituent parts of the concept “American nation” reflects the changes in political context of the epoch.

Figuring the Happiness of Poor Communities in Malang City: Measuring the Outcome of Slum and Squatter Areas

Citizen happiness is one of the attributes to measure the quality of life. It is known that the government city development priority, one of them is offering the citizens all the required services and developing sustainable city program then achieve happiness standard. If government cannot afford it for the people, it can be counted as failures for them. The main goal of this research is to figure out the happiness condition in Malang City, which was focused on happiness of poor communities. Happiness conditions were depicted on index that carried from Gross National Happiness Index (GNHI) method. There are 6 variables that were considered based on the necessities of life aspects which were health, education, good governance, community vitality, environment, and living standard. From the results, it can be described that the highest value of happiness index of poor communities in Malang City is more than 0.77. Those values were figured from city center areas which include Klojen, Gadingkasri, Kasin, Ketawanggede, Kota Lama, and Sawojajar sub-district. Then the lowest value of happiness index is less than 0.55, covered fringe areas.

Seksualitetens uddrivelse

The article investigates a historical development in the concepts of happiness and love and the norms of sexual behavior from a rural community over the upcoming welfare society in the suburbs to the late modern period in the big city. The changes are observed through three Danish literary texts from 1960, 1965 and 2011, first the novel I heltespor (“In the footsteps of heroes”) by Erik Aalbæk Jensen, then the short story Julestue (“The Christmas Gathering”) by Anders Bodelsen and finally the novel Se på mig (“Look at me”) by Kirsten Hammann. In the rural community happiness is knowing your right place and mastering the challenges of seduction and sexual temptation without the complete surrender to an inauthentic life of pure conventionalism. In the suburbs and early welfare society controlled infidelity with the exchange of partners represents a promise of happiness, something “more” and meaningful transcending the pure material satisfaction of the new and well managed consumer society. In the late modern period the importance of sexuality and love is downgraded in a remarkable manner: The search for happiness is extremely individualized and conceived as a kind of portal you have to enter at the precise right moment of your life trajectory. Sexuality and love seem to have lost their transcendent and integrational power in the game of happiness.

Ten-minute chat.

As well as being president of BVA's Northern Ireland Branch, Simon Doherty sits on the board of the livestock development charity, Send a Cow, which helps people in sub‐Saharan Africa escape hunger and works to improve the health, education, housing and happiness of whole communities.

Third Sector's contribution to Building Healthier & Happier Communities

Our poster will describe how Building Healthier and Happier Communities – a national programme, delivered locally – will demonstrate the difference an investment in community capacity makes to managing demand on primary care services. Charities, community groups, social enterprises and voluntary organisations of all shapes and sizes already make significant impacts in areas like early intervention, prevention and care and support for people with complex and multiple conditions but there is scope for them to do more. By shifting resources to build organisations’ capacity, extend their reach and improve their connections, we aim to ensure that more people get the help and support they need without having to visit their GP or other health and social care services. In addition, our programme engages with public sector colleagues to improve their understanding of how the third sector works with people to improve their health and happiness and how, by equipping people to do more for themselves and each other, third sector organisations play an important and ongoing role in building community resilience. Our poster will outline the Scottish commitment to health and social care integration, prevention and co-production; explain how our programme contributes to that change agenda; present our theory of change in the form of a logic model; set out in graphic form the process we have developed for delivering the investment (both direct funding and other forms of support); illustrate our cross-sector partnership approach; and depict the projects which have been selected to receive that support. It will also share some of the key learning points from the project so far.

Provisions of Celebrations in Islam from the Perspective of Shia and Sunni Jurists

As one of the most important psychological needs and due to its considerable effects on human life, happiness has always preoccupied human mind. Islam has paid attention to how one can have a healthy and happy life. Widespread effects, diversity of factors, excess, and negligence in regard with realization of happiness have made Islamic jurisprudence consider the issue seriously. It excess results in corruptions like promiscuity and its negligence also leads to some corruptions such as the misassumption that Islam agrees with grief and is against happiness. The present study was aimed at exploring the concept of happiness, understanding its significant place in life, figuring out its different categories, and examining various ways to express it based on the Holy Quran and infallible Imams’ (AS) narratives (Hadiths). The study was conducted using a ……. method. The results of the study indicate that happiness is necessary and, like other human needs and behaviors, it has specific provisions and traditions whose observation can result in a healthy and happy community. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s1p393

Engineering sustainable happiness

This paper presents the concept of sustainable happiness as “the pursuit of happiness that does not exploit other people, the environment or future generation” (O’Brien, 2005). The idea of promoting individual, social and community happiness is elaborated as a way of achieving sustainable happiness. By influencing decision making processes, sustainable happiness can guide individuals, communities and politicians in building so called “liveable communities” based on security and stability. It is crucial that sustainable happiness derives from relationships, meaningful work and engagement in a community rather than from pursuing personal objectives and acquiring goods. The key element of it is cooperation between people. It can be supported by nurturing certain virtues and getting engaged in so called “intentional activities” which are aimed at enhancing sustainability. Thus, this mutual work among people can contribute towards increasing global stability. Initiating specific activities and nurturing certain virtues means to engineer sustainable happiness. It can direct people in making ethical decisions and becoming better leaders (Kobza, Schaefer, Brandt and Glawar, 2015). This paper argues that creating such positive mind-sets and developing honesty and mutual trust ultimately lead towards sustainable happiness.

Digitization of Library Archives as a Tool for Preservation of Cultural Heritage

Museums, libraries and archives play a vital role in encouraging everyone to carry on learning throughout their lives and make important contributions to establishing healthier and happier communities. Archives, perhaps the best kept lifelong secret of all, are amazing treasure troves that contain the collective memories of the nation. They provide glimpses into the past that help to make sense of the present and the future.1 The main aim of this paper is to understand the importance of archives and the necessity of preserving them for the future generation to come through the process of digitization. A questionnaire based survey was conducted at Krishnadas Shama Central Library, Panaji, Goa. Since this is a public library respondents belonged to all walks of life, such as students, people who do the research and people who just browse the archives out of interest. After the investigation it was found that digitization of archives made the users to do references with greater speed and most of the respondents have expressed their satisfaction for the benefits of digitization of archives.

친환경 마을 조성을 위한 현황 조사 연구 -강릉시 구정면 여찬리와 운정동 마을을 중심으로-

As the seeking of environmental condition, the environmental friendly village has became important to planning and designing with neighbor communities. Our village was inferior to new order and identity is weakened, environmental maintenance. According to the situation the purpose of this paper is derived the plan point of environmental elements to be good for living in urban countryside villages. The primary research was to be planning directions and improvements through the present situation investigation. The results of this study are as follows. Through the two case study-village ; Yeochan-ri, Unjeong-dong in Gangwon province, environmental elements are classified such as superior 5parts and 17points in order to happiness of neighbor community. There are summarized a historical & traditional part, building, street/park/furniture, living and vision of village. Specially residents appealed to inconvenience by infringement of a large building in a small dwelling village. The data of this paper is effective in specialists carry out the planning and evaluation indicators regarding rural village. Finally regional experts by a rural field and local residents are necessary collaboration at the planning and maintenance of residential settlement through the pleasant participation.