Happiness in Thailand: Variation between urban and rural regions

Abstract

The culturally shared meaning of happiness is explored using a national sample of adults in Thailand, who were qualitatively interviewed about the subjective meaning of happiness. Themes of happiness showed individual as well as regional variations, especially between urban and rural regions of the country. Specifically, we found that Thai adults living in rural regions of the country tended to score high on the scale of interdependent happiness (Hitokoto & Uchida, 2014), and they also conceptualized close others and ordinary life as the central meaning of happiness. Variation in the shared meaning of happiness was discussed in light of adults living in the developing Buddhist Southeast-East Asian country.