Abstrakt
We investigate the direct influence of solar activity (represented by sunspot numbers) on human happiness (represented by the Twitter-based Happiness Index). We construct four models controlling for various statistical and dynamic effects of the analyzed series.
The final model gives promising results. First, there is a statistically significant negative influence of solar activity on happiness which holds even after controlling for the other factors.
Second, the final model, which is still rather simple, explains around 75% of variance of the Happiness Index. Third, our control variables contribute significantly as well: happiness is higher in no sunspots days, happiness is strongly persistent, there are strong intra-week cycles and happiness peaks during holidays.
Our results strongly contribute to the topical literature and they provide evidence of unique utility of the online data. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V.