On the weighting of homo economicus and homo virtus in human behaviour

In economic sciences, most analyses focus on the economic person construct. However, this formalization does not capture the complex nature of human behaviour. This paper estimates the weight that economic and noneconomic dimensions of human behaviour have on wellbeing. A utility function is considered that models behaviour from a complex standpoint, where the motivations of the economic individual (homo economicus) are analysed in a broad perspective by integrating emotional wellbeing and human virtues into the model (homo virtus). Three empirical measures of wellbeing are used: The Well-Being Index developed by the Boston Consulting Group's Sustainable Economic Development Assessment (2008–2018), the Index of Economic Well-Being from the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (1980–2014), and the Happiness Score from the World Happiness Report (2005–2018). Depending on data availability, the model is estimated globally for all countries, OECD countries, European countries, and developing countries using linear regression methods. The results indicate that, on average, the homo virtus dimension of behaviour has a weight of 11% in countries’ wellbeing functions, while the economic perspective has a weight of 89%. Additionally, the results show that richer countries value economic factors more than poorer countries. The analyses also show that the maximum level of emotional satisfaction is higher for European and OECD countries than for developing countries.

Marcela Parada-Contzen, José Rigoberto Parada-Daza