개인의 행복 여부 인식에 영향을 미치는 사회적 자본 요인 탐색

The purpose of this study is to examine how social capital influences individual perception of happiness or unhappiness. To do this, this research utilizes data from the Korean Education and Employment Panel (KEEP) and focuses on social capital composed of ‘importance of relationship, participation in group meetings, trust of general people and groups, and feeling safety’. First, this research utilized t-test to examine whether there are significant differences of social capital between group happiness and unhappiness. Results show that the happy group possesses a higher level of social capital than the unhappy group. Second, we used logistic regression to analyze the impact of each component of social capital on individual perception of happiness or unhappiness. Results show that all the factors of social capital significantly influence individual perception of happiness or unhappiness. In particular, ‘trust of groups’ shows the highest effect on individual happiness. The next highest components are participation in group meetings, feeling safety, trust of general people, and importance of relationships. Based on these results, theoretical contribution and practical implications were discussed.