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With the rising of “religious fever” in China rural area, the authors inquire the reason why it happened. First, the authors explore the group characteristics which could affect both happiness and the religion belief of Chinese rural elderly. The authors analyze the micro-data of “thousand village surveys” data of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics by using Order Logit and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method. These results show that when the elderly people have the following features related to health such as: feeling psychological loneliness, not obtaining the good management of chronic disease in the village, and not being participated in new rural cooperative medical system are more likely to believe in religious in the rural areas. And the authors also find these Chinese rural elderlies who believe in religion are less happy than atheism elderly actually (by PSM). Believing in religion is not the solution and maybe the way these elderly resorts to when they encounter health problem.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of religious involvement on subjective well-being (SWB), specifically taking into account the implication of selection effects explaining religious influence using the British Household Panel Survey data set.

In order to measure the level of religious involvement, the authors construct different indices on the base of individual religious belonging, participation and beliefs applying a propensity score matching estimator.

The results show that religious active participation plays a relevant role among the different aspects of religiosity; moreover, having a strong religious identity such as, at the same time, belonging to any religion, attending religious services once a week or more and believing that religion makes a great difference in life, has a high causal impact on SWB. The authors’ findings are robust to different aspects of life satisfaction.

The authors offer an econometric account of the causal impact of different aspects of religiosity finding evidence that the causal effect of religious involvement on SWB is better captured than through typical regression methodologies focussing on the mean effects of the explanatory variables.

Prior research mostly focuses on the effect of over-education on happiness, whereas the effect of under-education on happiness has received minimal attention. In addition, no research to date has examined the effect of both over- and under-education on happiness by using a full spectrum of workers. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to fill this research gap.

The ordered probit model is estimated to examine the effect of the education–occupation mismatch on happiness based on 2012 survey data from Taiwan.

The results generally indicate that over-education positively affects happiness, whereas under-education has a minimal effect. The effect of the education–occupation mismatch on happiness also varies with different age groups. Specifically, over-education positively affects happiness except for workers aged 42 and above, whereas negative effects of under-education are found only among workers aged between 32 and 42 when their social network is insufficiently extensive. Moreover, a worker’s social network as a non-pecuniary factor, rather than income as a pecuniary factor, is a major channel through which education enhances happiness.

Given the limited and mixed evidence on the relationship between over-education and happiness, this study contributes to the existing literature by examining whether and how the education–occupation mismatch (over- and under-education) affects the happiness of workers both directly and indirectly via pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors. The research issue remains unexplored to date. Addressing such a question should help explain the persistent trend in pursuing higher education in Taiwan, although highly educated people may suffer from unemployment and an education–occupation mismatch.

The peer review history for this paper is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2019-0283

Happiness at work (HAW) has been a hot item in both the academic and managerial literature, as HAW seems to have a positive effect on attractiveness of an organization on its current workforce and potential new employees. Many of the HAW models have been developed in a Western setting, while this research aims at evaluation of whether a previously validated HAW model in the Western context is also valid in a non-Western context; in this case at a Takaful insurance company in the United Arab Emirates.

Employees of the Takaful insurance company were asked to rate their organization on how high performance it was – using the validated high-performance organization (HPO) questionnaire – and how happy they were – using the previously validated HAW questionnaire. The collected data was subjected to confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling to arrive at a validated HAW model for this Takaful insurance company.

The study results show that if the Takaful insurance company transforms itself to an HPO, it will become more attractive to current and future employees, by raising the HAW of current employees. The results also show that HAW consists of three factors: work engagement, job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment.

The Takaful insurance company now has knowledge at its disposal about ways to promote happiness in its employees, thus raising its attractiveness to current and future employees. The developed HAW model for this company is potentially also useful for other Takaful insurance companies in the UAE.

This study was the first of its kind – using the HPO and HAW models developed in a Western context, to be validated for a Takaful insurance company – and as such, contributes to both the HPO and HAW literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate, at a national scale, how self-reported happiness varies with the different levels of environmental conditions resulting from national policies, while also considering different levels of freedom.

The authors estimated the effects of environmental performance on happiness using the log-log regression model presented.

Environmental performance is shown to have a direct impact on happiness. Nonetheless, the explanatory influence of freedom is only significantly positive for free countries, where the institutional and political arrangements are better established and thereby the effective democracy is more solid.

This article offers insights into happiness levels within the context of the current clamour for environmental protection and more sustainable development goals.

Every employee embodies manifestations of every demographic that attach to him or her different minority and majority statuses at the same time. As these statuses are often related to organizational hierarchies, employees frequently hold positions of dominance and subordination at the same time. Thus, a given individual’s coping strategies (or coping behavior) in terms of minority stress due to organizational processes of hierarchization, marginalization, and discrimination, are very often a simultaneous coping in terms of more than one demographic. Research on minority stress mostly focuses on single demographics representing only single facets of workforce diversity. By integrating the demographics of age, disability status, nationality, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, and religion into one framework, the intersectional model proposed in this chapter broadens the perspective on minorities and related minority stress in the workplace. It is shown that coping with minority stress because of one demographic must always be interpreted in relation to the other demographics. The manifestation of one demographic can limit or broaden one’s coping resources for coping with minority stress because of another dimension. Thus, the manifestation of one demographic can determine the coping opportunities and coping behavior one applies to situations because of the minority status of another demographic. This coping behavior can include disclosure decisions about invisible demographics. Therefore, organizational interventions aiming to create a supportive workplace environment and equal opportunities for every employee (e.g., diversity management approaches) should include more demographics instead of focusing only on few.

Unhappiness has been recognized as one of the main factors that cause political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in recent years. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of governance matters on happiness in the MENA region while controlling for other relevant determinants.

The paper applies panel random effects regression analyses by using data from 14 MENA countries over the period of 2009-2011.

The empirical results show that higher level of political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness and rule of law significantly increase happiness in the region. Furthermore, the paper finds that voice and accountability, regulatory quality and control of corruption variables have positive relationship with happiness but are not significant.

Most studies in this area cover developed countries. Since findings for developed countries might not be directly transferable to emerging economies such as MENA countries, therefore, more work is necessary to obtain a clearer picture of the political determinants of happiness in this region.

Behavior of a consumer largely depends on interplay between inner self and outer stimuli. Consumption decisions made in the market cannot be viewed as an independent event – it is closely related with values and social relationship and cultural allegiance. With globalization, culture becomes predominantly important strategic issue in market that has to be faced and properly managed. But, in different settings, management of cultural diversity could be seen as a threat, or an opportunity. As culture and values vary country to country, a close insight about country‐specific culture and core values is almost essential for a smooth sailing in any market. The purpose of this paper is to discuss overall fundamental dimensions of Indian culture and core values and resultant marketing implications.

The major task is to identify specific culture and core values at the time of marketing in a cross‐cultural setup. In this backdrop, an attempt has been made in this paper to discuss overall fundamental dimensions of Indian culture and core values with the help of a verbal model. The model has further been examined with the help of empirical marketing evidences from Indian market with an objective to help marketers to address those cultural and value dimensions at the time of their brand marketing in India.

Inputs about Indian culture and value dimensions can be of immense use to brand managers to strategies their marketing road map to minimize chances of erroneous decision‐making. A table summarizing the aspects that have to be considered at the time of building brands in India has been proposed to facilitate useful marketing decisions to penetrate the Indian market. At the time of starting its journey in a new country like India, the best approach a firm can adopt is to accept major issues involved with culture and values.

The verbal model about core culture and values of India, and proposed strategic roadmap, facilitate marketers to devise more accurate marketing strategies for India.

This paper presents a country‐specific approach that may be useful to marketers busy with consumer marketing in India. A verbal model of “Culture and Value Dimensions of Indian consumer” is of immense help in charting marketing strategies to win over Indian consumers.

This paper examines the in-depth relationship between religious beliefs and individual social class mobility expectations in China.

The data used in this article are mainly from the China Comprehensive Social Survey in 2010 (CGSS2010). Compared with other years' CGSS data, CGSS2010 includes a module on religious topics, and the questionnaire information related to religion is more comprehensive and suitable for in-depth analysis.

The results show that religious beliefs have a significant positive impact on personal social class mobility expectations. Based on the principle of diminishing marginal returns on capital, the positive impact of religious belief on the expectation of individual social class mobility is more significant in groups with nonagricultural household registration, higher education level, older age and better family background conditions. However, with the further improvement of family background conditions, this positive impact begins to weaken. In addition, possible channels of action include prejudice effects, psychological effects, individual capital effects and social capital effects. The results of other effects are positive except for the prejudice effect. Overall, religious beliefs, as one of the important components of contemporary Chinese culture, have a positive significance for the “Chinese Dream”.

There is also little literature globally that provides an in-depth analysis of the relationship between religion and economic development. Studies have led to an understanding of the relationship between religious beliefs and individual social class mobility expectations. But it is unclear whether theories developed based on Western spiritual experience will be applicable to China or not. The authors have tested for China.