Subjective well-being in housing purchasing: Evidence with survey data from the U.K. housing residential market

This paper empirically investigates the role of subjective well-being in the UK housing residential purchasing. Based on micro data and spanning the period 2009–2016, the empirical results show that subjective well-being exerts a positive effect on individuals’ housing purchasing. The findings survive robustness in which homeowners and tenants are explicitly separated, with the stronger effect coming from the tenants group. The findings also provide solid evidence that both the wealth and the public provisions/infrastructure channels seem to importantly drive the link between well-being and housing purchasing decisions. The results are expected to provide substantial implications to UK housing policy makers and regulators in relevance to housing policies.