An Analysis for the Association between Internet Use and Subjective Well-being

• Main Authors: CHEN, SIH-YING, 陳思穎
• Other Authors: PENG, YU-I
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/hh36mh

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 財政學系 === 107 === 　　With the rapid development of technology, the Internet is an indispensable part of life nowaday. It brings not only many conveniences but also sequelae to human beings. The convenience of the Internet has changed the life mode of modern people. People can not do things without the Internet. This study explores whether the use of the Internet can increase the level of life satisfaction and happiness, that is, the subjective well-being. Most studies in the literature on subjective well-being focuses on gender, age, income, health, marital status, employment status, education, and social capital. There are only a few literature discussing the relationship between Internet use and subjective well-being. This study investigates whether the use of the Internet is one of the factors influencing the subjective well-being of Taiwanese people. This paper uses the “2016 Panel Study of Family Dynamics” questionnaire as the data base. We use the ordered logit model as an empirical model. In the main sample, the study finds that using the Internet does not necessarily increase happiness. However, using the Internet in high frequency like “many times per day” increases subjective well-being, especially for life satisfaction, which shows that using the Internet has long-term effects. In the elderly sample, the result is the opposite. People “never using the Internet” have higher subjective well-being than people using the Internet “less than seven days a week”. On the contrary, the effect of leisure activities and social capital can increase subjective well-being of the elderly more than using the Internet. The empirical results show that high frequency of using the Internet can increase subjective well-being. We expect the policy can promote the popularization of the network education for school, the elderly, low-income families, and even whole Taiwanese people. We also expect the government to provide relevant policy subsidies to digital learning, in order to reduce the digital gap, enhance and expand the use of the Internet, and increase the subjective well-being of the whole people.