Papers on “subjective well-being”
Research on “subjective well-being” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers. Also as Markdown.
← Top research keywords · Keyword trends
Key findings#
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “subjective well-being” appeared in 1,311 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (835), health economics and policy (138) and management (93).
- 156 of them were published in 2025, against 116 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Peking University (17), Renmin University of China (11) and Beijing Normal University (10).
- The journals publishing most of them were Journal of Happiness Studies (171), Social Science & Medicine (25) and International Journal of Hospitality Management (11).
- The most-cited of them is “Happiness in the air: How does a dirty sky affect mental health and subjective well-being?” (Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2017), with 659 citations.
Papers per year#
20172026 (so far)
| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Economics | 86 | 73 | 94 | 87 | 97 | 81 | 68 | 73 | 91 | 85 |
| Health Economics and Policy | 7 | 16 | 18 | 17 | 10 | 14 | 11 | 14 | 17 | 14 |
| Management | 5 | 10 | 2 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 9 | 18 | 13 | 13 |
| Tourism and Hospitality | 5 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 2 |
| Operations Research | 4 | 2 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 2 |
| Information Systems | 4 | 6 | 7 | 11 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 |
| Finance | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 11 | 5 |
| Statistics | 3 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Higher Education and Research | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
| Marketing | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| AI | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Accounting | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 116 | 112 | 141 | 139 | 134 | 132 | 114 | 134 | 156 | 133 |
Where the papers come from#
| # | Journal | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Journal of Happiness Studies | 171 |
| 2 | Social Science & Medicine | 25 |
| 3 | International Journal of Hospitality Management | 11 |
| 4 | Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice | 11 |
| 5 | Journal of Business Research | 10 |
| 6 | Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization | 9 |
| 7 | Ecological Economics | 9 |
| 8 | Quality & Quantity | 8 |
| 9 | Technology in Society | 8 |
| 10 | Economics Letters | 8 |
| # | Institution | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peking University | 17 |
| 2 | Renmin University of China | 11 |
| 3 | Beijing Normal University | 10 |
| 4 | IZA - Institute of Labor Economics | 10 |
| 5 | University College London | 10 |
| 6 | Erasmus University Rotterdam | 8 |
| 7 | Shandong University | 8 |
| 8 | University of Hong Kong | 8 |
| 9 | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique | 7 |
| 10 | Hong Kong Polytechnic University | 7 |
| # | Country | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 157 |
| 2 | United States | 104 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 59 |
| 4 | Germany | 39 |
| 5 | Italy | 35 |
| 6 | Australia | 31 |
| 7 | Japan | 25 |
| 8 | France | 24 |
| 9 | Canada | 18 |
| 10 | Netherlands | 18 |
| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | life satisfaction | 141 |
| 2 | happiness | 89 |
| 3 | China | 43 |
| 4 | gender differences | 41 |
| 5 | COVID-19 pandemic | 37 |
| 6 | older adults | 31 |
| 7 | cross-national comparison | 30 |
| 8 | mental health | 22 |
| 9 | income inequality | 21 |
Most-cited papers#
| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 659 | 5.7 | Happiness in the air: How does a dirty sky affect mental health and subjective well-being? | Journal of Environmental Economics and Management | 2017-04-05 | Xin Zhang, Xiaobo Zhang, Xi Chen |
| 2 | 534 | 5.8 | A hedonic motivation model in virtual reality tourism: Comparing visitors and non-visitors | International Journal of Information Management | 2019-03-04 | Myung Ja Kim, C. Michael Hall |
| 3 | 525 | 4.6 | Does self-control predict financial behavior and financial well-being? | Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance | 2017-05-05 | Camilla Strömbäck, Thérèse Lind, Kenny Skagerlund et al. |
| 4 | 477 | 4.7 | Caste and development: Contemporary perspectives on a structure of discrimination and advantage | World Development | 2018-06-21 | David Mosse |
| 5 | 442 | 6.0 | Is happiness U-shaped everywhere? Age and subjective well-being in 145 countries | Journal of Population Economics | 2020-09-09 | David G. Blanchflower |
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “subjective well-being”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/subjective-well-being
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-subjective-well-being,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {Papers on “subjective well-being”},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/subjective-well-being}},
urldate = {2026-11-05},
note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}