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Television, Sustainability and Subjective Wellbeing in Peru

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Abstract

Earlier studies have concluded that television consumption is detrimental to environmental sustainability and people’s subjective wellbeing due to its promotion of consumerism and materialistic goals. However, recent evidence indicates that, in contexts of relative deprivation, television can be a source of wellbeing, a main provider of entertainment and information. This might present a conflict between the wellbeing of present and future generations, and might pose a challenge for sustainable development. This article contributes to the emergent debate on the role of television in sustainable development, by presenting a study of the effects of television viewing in a heterogeneous Peruvian sample (n = 500). Regression analysis results indicate that television consumption is negatively associated with sustainable attitudes, partially through the promotion of goals linked to materialism. The relationship between television consumption and happiness is not significant but becomes marginally positive when materialistic goals are accounted for. This study finds that in countries like Peru, television need not limit the wellbeing of present and future generations if materialistic messages are reduced and the content of environmental programmes is critically revised.

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Notes

  1. For data on young people’s viewing habits see: http://www.worldtelevisionday.tv/young-and-tv/ (accessed 27.07.2017).

  2. In this section, ‘quality of life’ and ‘wellbeing’ are used interchangeably as umbrella terms encompassing the objective and subjective dimensions of wellbeing.

  3. The WCED defined Sustainable Development (SD) as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED 1987:43).

  4. Baron and Kenny’s (1986) procedure is based on four steps for the study of mediation based on regression analysis results. The first step aims at showing that the independent variable predicts the dependent variable (television viewing predicts environmental behaviours). The second establishes that the independent variable explains the mediator (television viewing predicts materialism). The third and the fourth are studied in the same equation and show that the mediator predicts the dependent variable and that the independent variable is no longer explaining the dependent as the mediator is controlled for (the coefficient of television viewing should not be significantly different from zero).

  5. Data from the 2007 national census is available on-line at http://www.inei.gob.pe.

  6. Following Eid and Diener (2004) subjective wellbeing encompasses both cognitive judgments of life satisfaction and affective assessments of moods and emotions. Subjective vitality taps on the extent to which people can function adequately in their socio-economic and environmental context and thus are able to fulfill their psychological needs (Ryan and Frederick 1997). Past literature suggests that happiness and life satisfaction correlate quite closely (Graham 2009) and that their tendency is to evolve in the same direction and not in a divergent one (Easterlin 2013). In many studies both concepts are used interchangeably (Frey and Stutzer 2002).Regarding SVS, Ryan and Frederick (1997) indicate that subjective vitality relates negatively to measures of negative emotions such as anxiety, which in turn is negatively correlated with measures of positive affect such as happiness.

  7. In Spanish: ‘¿En general como se siente normalmente de feliz/infeliz?’.

  8. The six items of the subjective vitality scale were: (1) I feel alive and vital; (2) Sometimes I feel so alive I just want to burst; (3) I have energy and spirit; (4) I look forward to each new day; (5) I nearly always feel alert and awake; (6) I feel energized. Answers were given using a five-point scale (from ‘not at all true’ = 1 to ‘very true’ = 5) and the SVS variable was calculated averaging the answers to the six statements (Ryan and Frederick 1997).

  9. Factor analyses were conducted using principal component analysis with varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization.

  10. Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters (2004) indicate that results of wellbeing estimations are not sensitive to the choice of method. All OLS estimations presented here used robust standard errors. The potential instability of predictors due to multicollinearity was investigated through the collinearity statistics available in STATA/SE 15.2.

  11. Quechua is the indigenous language spoken in the central Andean highlands and by many urban migrants in the sample. It identifies respondents with an indigenous background, often associated with a greater disposition to express positive feelings (Copestake 2008).

  12. This finding should be taken with caution. The fact that locations were chosen to represent the socio-economic and geographic heterogeneity of the country implies that a third variable like wealth might be jointly determining the results. When Guillen-Royo and Kasser (2015) instrumented the variable personal income using the same data-set, both personal income and the location variables became non-significantly different from zero.

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Acknowledgements

The comments and suggestions of Jakob Utgård, Tim Kasser and an anonymous reviewer to earlier drafts of this paper are gratefully acknowledged. This work is part of the Happy-ICT project at the University of Oslo supported by the Research Council of Norway, SAMANSVAR programme. Data collection was carried out during a post-doctoral fellowship funded by the Research Council of Norway, Latin America programme.

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  1. Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo, Pb. 1108 Blindern, 0317, Oslo, Norway

    Monica Guillen-Royo

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Correspondence to Monica Guillen-Royo.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6, 7 and 8.

Table 6 Descriptive statistics for control and independent variables
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Table 7 Television viewing, sustainable attitudes and happiness (OLS)
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Table 8 Television viewing, life satisfaction and subjective vitality (OLS)
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Guillen-Royo, M. Television, Sustainability and Subjective Wellbeing in Peru. Soc Indic Res 141, 895–917 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-018-1853-z

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