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Background: Understanding what promotes or hinders a community's capacity to serve the priorities of its residents is essential for the alignment of citizen needs and governance. Participatory approaches that engage community residents on the topic of community wellbeing are useful methods for defining outcomes that reflect a community's goals and priorities. Using qualitative focus group methods, the aim of this study was to outline bottom-up definitions of community wellbeing from a diverse pool of community residents in Ontario, Canada. Methods: Semi-structured, two-hour group interviews were conducted with adult (≥18 years) participants (N = 15) residing in four communities across Canada's largest province of Ontario. Participants were purposively selected from a pool of screening questionnaires to ensure diverse group compositions based on race, gender, age, and educational attainment. Interviews were thematically analysed using descriptive and interpretive methods to characterize resident conceptions of community wellbeing. Results: Focus group participants were between 18 and 75 years of age and most had lived in their local community for 5 or more years. Four major themes emerged: (1) a sense of community belonging is cultivated through shared spaces, routines, support, and identities; (2) a community constitutes the amenities and social contexts that enable residents to thrive; (3) effective regional decision-making must be community-informed; and (4) the wellbeing of a community relies on equal opportunities for engagement and participation. Conclusions: Residents described their communities and their associated wellbeing as a combination of accessible amenities and opportunities to engage without marginalization. This study underscores the value of participatory approaches in community wellbeing research, where the viewpoint and life experience of residents is used to inform local decision-making and service delivery. Future research will capture more diverse perspectives towards community belonging, particularly from community newcomers, for the development of regionally appropriate indicators of community wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people report disliking taxes despite the fact that tax funds are used to provide essential services for the taxpayer and fellow citizens. In light of past research demonstrating that people are more likely to engage in prosocial action when they recognize how their assistance positively impacts the recipient, we examine whether recognition of how one's tax contributions help other citizens–perceived prosocial taxation–predicts more supportive views of taxation and greater engagement. We conducted three correlational studies using North American samples (N = 902, including a nationally representative sample of over 500 US residents) in which we find that perceived prosocial taxation is associated with greater enjoyment paying taxes, willingness to continue paying taxes, and larger financial contributions in a tax-like payment. Findings hold when controlling for several demographic variables, participants' general prosocial orientation, and the perception that tax dollars are being put to good use. In addition, we examined data from six waves of the World Values Survey (N > 474,000 across 107 countries). We find that people expressing trust in their government and civil service–thereby indicating some confidence that their taxes will be used in prosocial ways–are significantly more likely to state that it is never justifiable to cheat on taxes. Together, these studies offer a new and optimistic perspective on taxation; people may hold more positive views and be more willing to contribute if they believe their contribution benefits others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new public-use dataset for community-level life satisfaction in Canada, based on more than 500,000 observations from the Canadian Community Health Surveys and the General Social Surveys. The country is divided into 1216 similarly sampled geographic regions, using natural, built, and administrative boundaries. A cross-validation exercise suggests that our choice of minimum sampling thresholds approximately maximizes the predictive power of our estimates. The resulting dataset reveals robust differences in life satisfaction between and across urban and rural communities. We compare aggregated life satisfaction data with a range of key census variables to illustrate some of the ways in which lives differ in the most and least happy communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we estimate the size of weekend effects for seven emotions and then explore their main determinants for the working population in the United States, using the Gallup/Healthways US Daily Poll 2008–2012. We first find that weekend effects exist for all emotions, and that these effects are not explained by sample selection bias. Full-time workers have larger weekend effects than do part-time workers. We then explore the sources of weekend effects and find that workplace trust and workplace social relations, combined with differences in social time spent with family and friends, together almost fully explain the weekend effects for happiness, laughter, enjoyment and sadness, for both full-time and part-time workers, with significant but smaller proportions explained for the remaining three emotions—worry, anger and stress. Finally, we show that workplace trust and social relations significantly improve emotions and life evaluations on both weekends and weekdays for all workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent large Canadian survey permits us to compare face-to-face (‘real-life’) and on-line social networks as sources of subjective well-being. The sample of 5,000 is drawn randomly from an on-line pool of respondents, a group well placed to have and value on-line friendships. We find three key results. First, the number of real-life friends is positively correlated with subjective well-being (SWB) even after controlling for income, demographic variables and personality differences. Doubling the number of friends in real life has an equivalent effect on well-being as a 50% increase in income. Second, the size of online networks is largely uncorrelated with subjective well-being. Third, we find that real-life friends are much more important for people who are single, divorced, separated or widowed than they are for people who are married or living with a partner. Findings from large international surveys (the European Social Surveys 2002–2008) are used to confirm the importance of real-life social networks to SWB; they also indicate a significantly smaller value of social networks to married or partnered couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]