Curtailment of Civil Liberties and Subjective Life Satisfaction.

This analysis focuses on the lockdown measures in the context of the Covid-19 crisis in Spring 2020 in Germany. In a randomized survey experiment, respondents were asked to evaluate their current life satisfaction after being provided with varying degrees of information about the lethality of Covid-19. We use reactance as a measure of the intensity of a preference for freedom to explain the variation in the observed subjective life satisfaction loss. Our results suggest that it is not high reactance alone that is associated with large losses of life satisfaction due to the curtailment of liberties. The satisfaction loss occurs in particular in combination with receiving information about the (previously overestimated) lethality of Covid-19. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10902-021-00491-1.

[Lost Happiness - Loss of Life Satisfaction in the Corona Crisis]. / Verlorenes Glück ­ Zufriedenheitsverluste in der Corona-Krise.

This study illustrates the loss of life satisfaction, and with it the psychological costs of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown measures taken, for self-employed and women. Building on the data collected by Windsteiger et al. (2020) and their internet interviews at the peak of lockdown measures, and looking at specific population subgroups, this essay illustrates that many solo self-employed and women report a significant decline in life satisfaction, and that these effects are strongest where solo self-employment coincides with economic losses and childcare responsibilities for women with children of dependent age.

Replacing rubber plantations by rain forest in Southwest China--who would gain and how much?

The cultivation of rubber trees in Xishuangbanna Prefecture in China's Yunnan Province has triggered an unprecedented economic development but it is also associated with severe environmental problems. Rubber plantations are encroaching the indigenous rain forests at a large scale and a high speed in Xishuangbanna. Many rare plant and animal species are endangered by this development, the natural water management is disturbed, and even the microclimate in this region has changed over the past years. The present study aims at an assessment of the environmental benefits accruing from a reforestation project partly reversing the deforestation that has taken place over the past years. To this end, a Contingent Valuation survey has been conducted in Xishuangbanna to elicit local residents' willingness to pay for this reforestation program that converts existing rubber plantations back into forest. It is shown that local people's awareness of the environmental problems caused by increasing rubber plantation is quite high and that in spite of the economic advantages of rubber plantation there is a positive willingness among the local population to contribute financially to a reduction of existing rubber plantations for the sake of a partial restoration of the local rain forest. These results could be used for the practical implementation of a Payments for Eco-System Services system for reforestation in Xishuangbanna.