Abstract
Enhancing residents’ subjective well-being (SWB) is a central objective of sustainable development. Using four waves of data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) covering 2016–2022, this study introduces an innovative framework to examine the impact of Environmental, Social, and Governance perception (ESGP) on SWB. Employing a two-way fixed effects model, the analysis reveals a significant positive association between ESGP and SWB, which remains robust across multiple checks. The results further indicate that ESGP improves SWB primarily through two mediating mechanisms: enhancing perceived social fairness and increasing satisfaction with government performance. While outdoor physical activity exerts a significant positive influence on SWB, it does not function as a key mediator in the ESGP–SWB linkage. Heterogeneity analysis shows that age does not significantly moderate the ESGP–SWB relationship, whereas urban residents exhibit stronger effects than their rural counterparts. At the regional level, the influence of ESGP is most pronounced in economically advanced areas, following the order: eastern > central > western > northeastern regions. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by extending knowledge on the determinants of well-being and providing empirical evidence on how residents shape their happiness through perceptions of environmental, social, and governance conditions.
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Data availability
The main data used in this study are derived from the public database of CFPS (China Family Panel Studies) and the research reports published by the Institute for Sustainable Development Goals, Tsinghua University. Additional auxiliary data used in this study come from the National Bureau of Statistics and the CNRDS (China National Research Data Services) database. The URLs are: https://opendata.pku.edu.cn/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.18170/DVN/45LCSO (CFPS). [https://thusdg.tsinghua.edu.cn/yj1/xmcg.htm](https:/thusdg.tsinghua.edu.cn/yj1/xmcg.htm) (Research Reports). https://data.stats.gov.cn/easyquery.htm?cn=E0101 (National Bureau of Statistics). https://www.cnrds.com/Home/Login. (CNRDS).
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B.D.T.: Conceptualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. H.W.X.: Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Formal analysis. H.Y.L.: Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.
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This study is a secondary analysis of de-identified, publicly available data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), a longitudinal survey of human participants administered by Peking University. In the early waves, including the 2010 baseline and 2012 wave, CFPS was conducted under Peking University’s institutional review and project-level oversight in place at that time. In 2014, ethical oversight was centralized under the Peking University Biomedical Ethics Committee, which issued the unified approval number IRB00001052-14010 and has renewed this approval annually for all subsequent CFPS waves. The present study adheres to the principles outlined in the WMA Declaration of Helsinki and the CIOMS International Ethical Guidelines. This study relies on the CFPS database(publicly available, de-identified data) and involves no additional human participants; thus, no additional ethical review is required.
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For the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), written informed consent was obtained from all participants by trained interviewers immediately before each face-to-face interview during the fieldwork period of each survey wave. For the waves used in this study, the fieldwork periods were as follows: CFPS 2016: July 1, 2016–May 31, 2017. CFPS 2018: June 5, 2018–May 31, 2019. CFPS 2020: July 1, 2020–December 31, 2020. CFPS 2022: May 1, 2022–December 31, 2022. Informed consent was obtained during the corresponding fieldwork periods for each survey wave. Participants aged ≥15 years provided their own consent, and legal guardians provided consent on behalf of minors (<15 years). All signed consent forms, including the exact calendar date of signature for each respondent, are archived at Peking University’s Institute of Social Science Survey with wave-specific identifiers and are not accessible to secondary data users. Therefore, the exact signature dates of individual consent forms are not available to secondary data users. The project execution period aligns with the informed consent collection period for each wave. For further details on the informed consent process, please refer to the official CFPS WeChat public account. This study relies solely on the publicly available, de-identified CFPS database and involves no additional contact with human participants; therefore, no new informed consent procedures were required.
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Bi, D., Huang, W. & Hu, Y. Green well-being: a study on the impact of ESG perception on subjective well-being. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-06364-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-06364-9


