DOI: https://doi.org/10.36347/sjebm.2026.v13i03.006

Pages: 133-141

Worldwide researchers are examining the happiness of the citizens and its determining factors. The utilitarian thought of happiness states that happiness can be increased by maximizing the welfare of people. Again, the welfare of the people is related to the access to resources and the utilization of resources, which further leads to influence the ecological footprint. Thus, there is an interconnection between happiness and ecological footprint. The existing literature is unable to examine happiness and its determining factors across countries. Therefore, the present study aims to bridge this research gap by a theoretical as well as empirical investigation of a panel of 55 countries over two decades. We find that in most of the countries, the happiness index value as well as the ecological footprint increased during the study period. This indicates that there may be a relation between the rise in subjective well-being and environmental degradation across countries. We verified such a relationship by panel data analysis. Our analysis reveals an inverse and significant relationship between subjective well-being (measured by HPI) and environmental degradation (measured by ecological footprint). This means that the ecological footprint influences the HPI negatively and significantly. Thus, there is a need of global level policy action to monitor the ecological footprint to enhance happiness and well-being.