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Values and their impact on subjective well-being have been an important area of research in the social sciences. Researchers have conceptualised and developed various measures on values for use in large-scale surveys. One of these measures is the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ; Schwartz, 2007), an established scale that has been validated and widely used (e.g., in the World Values Survey and other studies). Psychological flourishing as an indicator of well-being has garnered considerable research interest (Hone, Jarden, & Schofield, 2014). We used the Flourishing Scale (Diener et al., 2010) to measure whether major aspects of psychological wealth are present in one’s life, and whether one’s life has purpose and meaning. For satisfaction with life, we used the five-item Satisfaction with Life Scale developed by Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin (1985). In this chapter, we investigate the contributing role of values on 1,503 Singaporeans’ psychological flourishing and satisfaction with life. Our results showed that for the PVQ, self-transcendence and conservation had a significant positive impact on Singaporeans’ psychological flourishing. Conservation had a significant and positive impact on Singaporeans’ satisfaction with life. We further discuss these results and their implications in the context of Singapore.

Religion is a key source of core values and one of the most deeply psychological experiences; however, prior research has often inadequately measured religion's influence on consumption behaviors. Our research addresses criticisms of prior research by (1) reducing cultural bias by conducting research within one country, (2) examining both religious affiliation and religiosity, (3) exploring numerous consumption behaviors (social status desire, materialism views, sustainable behaviors, environmental views, and volunteering behavior) in a within-subjects design, and (4) testing religion's effect on consumption behavior with over 1,000 participants. Findings provide insight for consumer well-being. Specifically, consumers high in external religiosity are more materialistic, more sustainable, and more likely to volunteer than consumers low in external religiosity. Consumers high in internal religiosity are also more likely to be sustainable and hold pro-environmental views. In addition, Buddhists and Hindus are less likely to hold pro-environmental views than Christians. Buddhists are more materialistic than Christians, and Hindus are less desiring of social status than Christians. In addressing the criticisms of prior research in the context of consumption, our research builds on values-based and social-based theories.

Religion is a key source of core values that influence consumer attitudes and behaviors; however, limited research has explored religion’s influence on consumer behavior. Therefore, we take a broad-based approach to show that religion acts as an individual difference variable to influence a variety of consumer behaviors, and, in doing so, we address criticisms of past research in the field. First, we greatly reduce cultural bias by conducting our research within one country. Second, we examine both the consumer’s belief system (i.e., religious affiliation) and the degree to which consumers hold their belief system (i.e., internal and external religiosity). Third, we explore several consumer behaviors in a within-subject design, showing that religion’s influence on behavior is not just a onetime accidental occurrence.

Our paper reports and discusses issues relating to subjective wellbeing in selected countries in ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations), a regional organization that coordinates and promotes the economic, social and cultural interests of member countries in Southeast Asia. Comparisons will be made across the five founding members of ASEAN, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand using data from the 2004, 2006 and 2007 AsiaBarometer Surveys. The indicators of subjective wellbeing used are perceptions of happiness, enjoyment, and achievement. We also examined the impact of selected demographic and non-demographic variables on these indicators.

A large-scale, representative survey of Singaporeans was conducted to obtain data, amongst others, on their values and attitudes. Factor and cluster analyses were performed. First, the underlying dimensions of Singaporeans’ value system were identified using factor analysis. Based on 75 life-style and value items, six factors were obtained (Table 1). They were (1) family value oriented, (2) entrepreneurial sprit oriented, (3) status oriented, (4) traditional value oriented, (5) materialism oriented, and (6) society oriented factors. These six factors were then utilized to identify clusters. The cluster analysis identified the following seven major cluster of Singaporeans: (1) Traditional family oriented, (2) new age family oriented, (3) independents, (4) entrepreneurs, (5) aspires, (6) materialists, and (7) pragmatists. The cluster centroids are provided in Table 2.

This article attempts to measure the effect ofmaterialistic inclination on the degree of lifesatisfaction. The study is based on a sample of about1600 respondents randomly selected from differentparts of the city state of Singapore. Theserespondents were divided into two distinct groups withhigh or low materialistic inclination. It wasobserved that when these respondents were asked torate the importance of the nine items from Kahle'sList of Values, the ratings of seven of these itemswere found to be significantly different between thetwo groups. The two groups also indicated differentchoices when asked to rate the things they wanted mostout of life. Finally, it was revealed that they alsoreported different degrees of satisfaction withvarious domains in life in general. However, as withregard to satisfaction with life in Singapore inparticular, there were no significant differencesobserved between the two groups.

This paper summarises the findings of a large-scale lifestyle study of Singaporeans. Using a stratified sampling approach, the values, the attitudes, and the aspirations of Singaporeans were examined to generate descriptive profiles of typical Singaporeans.