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al judgment of well-being based on information the person believes is relevant', while well-being 'includes all of the evaluations, both cognitive and affective, that people make of their lives and components of their lives'. While according to some authors, the terms 'happiness,' 'subjective wellbeing', 'well-being', 'satisfaction' and 'quality of life' are somewhat different and each have their own specific meaning, responses in different surveys are highly correlated (Fordyce, 1988; Frey and Stutzer, 2002b), and many analyses use them indiscriminately. In this current study these terms are used with the understanding that they have a similar connotation.

The present study will use a 'bottom-up' approach to the analysis of subjective well-being. This approach considers that overall life satisfaction is determined by what is called 'domain satisfaction'; the evaluation of own personal situation on different dimensions of life such as: financial situation, housing conditions, health, leisure, job or education, among other dimensions. Some authors signal the 'mediator' role of those domain satisfactions to determine overall happiness (Cummins, 1996; van Praag et al., 2003; Easterlin and Sawangfa, 2007). In what follows, we will consider that leisure satisfaction has leisure experiences as the main input; higher leisure satisfaction will contribute, in turn, to higher overall satisfaction or happiness.

In order to assess the size of different influences upon happiness and satisfaction with life in general, psychologists have been using surveys since long ago, while only recently economists have recognized that there is useful information in a subjective well-being answer as an empirical approximation for the theoretical concept of utility. With the exception of the seminal work of Easterlin (1974), most research has taken place during the last two decades. The existing state of research suggests that, for many purposes, happiness or reported subjective well-being is a satisfactory empirical proxy of individual utility. From the information about the determinants of individual happiness, different situations of economic and social policies inside a country or a region can be analyzed .

Frey and Stutzer (2002b) give some important reasons for economists to consider happiness research. First, happiness research can help to evaluate net effects, in terms of individual utilities, for different economic policies. Understanding the determinants of subjective well-being can thus usefully inform economic policy decisions. Second, this research also has relevance to economists because of the effect of institutional conditions such as the quality of governance and the size of social capital on individual well-being. It may also help to solve empirical puzzles that conventional economic theories find difficult to explain. For instance, using this approach it is possible to understand why for several countries since World War ll although they have raised their real income drastically, the self-reported subjective well-being of the population has not increased or has even slightly fallen.

Data about happiness are collected through direct questioning via interviews or self-administered questionnaires in which individuals self-rate their happiness on a single item or on a multi-item scale. These scales offer a list of options, which are ranked according to the levels of h