The Art of Living Well: Cultural Participation and Well-Being

This paper reviews the evidence on the relationships between cultural participation and well-being. We classify the literature according to the strength of available evidence and various types of cultural activities. Secondly, this paper uses data from time use surveys from Canada, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States to study individuals’ emotional responses to a series of daily activities. A simple model of time allocation is used to show that experienced well-being is one of the reasons why individuals engage into cultural activities. Furthermore, the model helps explain why cultural participation, in spite of being one of the most enjoyable human activities, is also the least undertaken. We show that heterogeneity of preferences results in a strong selection effect in available time-use statistics.