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International Journal of Intercultural Relations

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel

The relationship of competitiveness motive on peoples happiness through education

Hoi Yan Cheung a, , Alex W.H. Chan b,1
a b

Department of Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong School of Economics and Finance, The University of Hong Kong, K.K. Leung Building, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
This paper applied data from 32 countries to nd out the relationship between competitiveness motive and happiness, and results showed that competitiveness motive negatively predicted happiness through public education expenditure. Public education expenditure was found to have a mediation effect between competitiveness motive and happiness. Different variables were used, such as happiness score of 20002008, public health expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004, public education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004, and competitiveness motive score. Overall, countries with high competitiveness motive had low public expenditure on education and thus countries had low happiness scores. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received in revised form 20 October 2010 Accepted 2 November 2010 Keywords: Cross-country Competitiveness motive Happiness Public education expenditure Public health expenditure

1. Introduction The competitiveness motive has been a topic of research for decades. People who score high on this variable are known as other-referenced people; that is, they are motivated by social comparison. They aim mainly to demonstrate superior capacity and want to show their competence by doing better than others (Van de Vliert & Janssen, 2002). The competitiveness motive is dened as the drive to win against others and obtain some form of dominance over them through winning (Lynn, p. 60). On the SpenceHelmreich scale, the items on competitiveness measure motivation to do better than others. People with a strong competitiveness motive have an external locus of perceived control and causality and thus lower levels of intrinsic interest in and satisfaction with tasks (Duda, 1992; Dweck & Leggett, 1988). These people exhibit competitiveness, which involves pitting oneself against competitors, and enjoy interpersonal competition (Spence & Helmreich, 1983). Franken and Brown (1992) explained that for people who are competitive, competitive situations could be a source of motivation, and these situations provide such people with information about what is an acceptable or high level of performance. Interestingly, competitiveness is one of the major motivations of entrepreneurs (Maurer et al., 1994). The competitiveness motive is associated with achievement, as competitiveness is a motivator for work effort. For example, in their study of college students, Harackiewicz, Barron, Carter, Lehto, and Elliot (1997) found that the competitiveness motive had a positive effect on graded performance because people with a competitiveness motive worked hard to ensure that they received a good grade, although they may have had a more supercial understanding of the material. In terms of career, students who score high on the competitiveness motive are able to get higher pay and have better prospects for promotion. It is also believed that the competitiveness motive is associated with positive motivational qualities and can lead to creativity (Franken & Brown, 1992).

Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 2788 7081; fax: +852 2788 8960. E-mail addresses: hycheun3@cityu.edu.hk (H.Y. Cheung), alexchan@econ.hku.hk (A.W.H. Chan). 1 Tel.: +852 2857 8510; fax: +852 2548 1152. 0147-1767/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2010.11.008

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Kirkcaldy and Furnham (1993) found that monetary success was positively related to competitiveness because people with higher other-referenced performance motives will boost investments to show that they are better than others. The competitiveness motive is found to be a signicant factor for economic growth across countries (Lynn, 1991). Furnham, Kirkcaldy, and Lynns study (1996) showed that the competitiveness motive was positively correlated with GDP across 42 countries. Based on the above research, competitiveness motive is positively related to economic growth since money is spent on areas related to economic development, such as research and development (Varsakelis, 2001). When this type of expenditure is encouraged to boost the competitiveness of the economy, expenditure on public services may be lower, and thus peoples happiness may decrease. Some studies have found that competitiveness motive is negatively associated with satisfaction. For example, Van de Vliert and Janssen (2002) found that the competitiveness motive is negatively correlated with life satisfaction and wellbeing. Diener and Biswas-Diener (2002) also found that highly competitive people had less time for leisure and socializing and thus a decreased sense of well-being. Very often, peoples happiness is related to their satisfaction and well-being levels (Blanchower & Oswald, 2002). Overall, based on the above studies, the following hypotheses are developed. H1. Countries with high competitiveness motive scores will spend lower percentages of their GDP on public services, such as public health and education expenditures as percentage of their GDP. H2. Countries with high competitiveness motive scores will have lower scores on happiness

H3. Countries that spend lower percentages of their GDP on public services, such as public health and education expenditures as percentage of their GDP, will have lower scores on happiness. Furthermore, this study wants to make a contribution in testing if public health or education expenditure as percentage of their GDP has any mediation effect between competitiveness motive and happiness. Therefore, the following hypothesis is developed. H4. Public health or education expenditure as percentage of their GDP has a mediation effect between competitiveness motive and happiness across countries 2. Method Three data sets were applied and there were six variables in this study, namely competitiveness motive, public health and education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004, and happiness 20002008. First of all, the dataset for the competitiveness motive was taken from Lynns study (1991). The data for competitiveness motive was collected in the late 1980s from over 14,000 young people across 43 countries. Participants were asked to answer validated questionnaires related to their competitiveness motive (Furnham et al., 1996). As mentioned earlier, competitiveness motive was measured by ve items from the Spence and Helmreich Competitiveness Scale, and each item was scored on a strongly agree to strongly disagree scale (Lynn, 1991). Public health and education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004 were included for analysis using data taken from the World Bank (2009a,b). We chose these years because many countries did not have data of 2005 and onwards while this paper was written. According to the World Development Indicators (World Bank, 2004), public expenditure on education as percentage of GDP indicates the public spending based on percentage of GDP on public education plus subsidies to private education at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. For public health expenditure as percentage of GDP, it consists of recurrent and capital spending from government budgets, external borrowings and grants, and social health insurance funds based on percentage of GDP (World Bank, 2004). Data collected by World Bank was widely used in research, and more than 150 countries around the world, with populations of more than 1 million, were included for data collection. The happiness dataset of this study was taken from the World Database of Happiness (Veenhoven, 2009) which includes the average happiness scores of 145 nations for the period of 20002008. Unfortunately, the World Database of Happiness did not include happiness scores of specic years. Therefore, since the years of 2001 and 2004 of public expenditure as percentage of GDP on health and education were included in this study, countries average happiness scores for the period 20002008 was applied. According to the World Database of Happiness, happiness is dened by the degree of the overall subjective enjoyment of ones life. The method of questioning was mainly applied to measure happiness and the questions were classied by two ways, and they were focus (the kind of happiness addressed) and timeframe (the period considered). All assessments of happiness were scored by numerical scales of 110. Similar to the dataset of competitiveness motive, participants of the happiness database were also young people. The World Database of Happiness (2009) also suggested that the average happiness in nations was a valid indicator of the livability of these nations by using different statistical tests for checking the validity, such as the global tests for concurrent and congruent validity. Items included in measuring happiness across nations are available at the World Database of Happiness (Veenhoven, 2009). The data of 32 countries, which were collected from the three datasets, are presented in Table 1. In fact, the idea of combining different datasets for this study was taken by the study of Van de Vliert and Janssen (2002) in which they applied Lynns data on mastery and competitiveness motives to predict work satisfaction, life satisfaction and subjective well-being taken from the Human Development Index across 42 nations. This study is trying to make a contribution in nding out how competitiveness motive is able to predict other factors, such as public expenditures on health and education as percentage of GDP, and how those factors can predict the happiness of people across countries. Please cite this article in press as: Cheung, H. Y., & Chan, A.W.H. The relationship of competitiveness motive on peoples happiness through education. International Journal of Intercultural Relations (2010), doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2010.11.008

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H.Y. Cheung, A.W.H. Chan / International Journal of Intercultural Relations xxx (2010) xxxxxx 3 Public health expenditure as % of GDP in 2001 5 6 1 7 3 4 7 3 6 8 8 5 1 5 5 6 3 6 7 4 6 3 1 3 3 5 7 6 5 6 6 2 Public health expenditure as % of GDP in 2004 4 6 1 7 3 5 7 4 5 9 8 5 1 6 5 7 3 7 8 4 7 4 1 3 3 6 8 7 4 7 7 2 Public education expenditure as % of GDP in 2001 5 5 2 6 4 4 5 4 6 4 4 4 7 4 5 7 7 5 6 3 3 5 4 4 7 5 3 5 6 Public education expenditure as % of GDP in 2004 4 5 2 6 4 2 4 4 6 5 4 3 5 6 4 5 7 7 5 5 3 5 4 4 7 6 3 5 6 Competitiveness motive 8.51 11.42 14.25 10.75 11.17 12.33 12.03 11.54 12.97 10.19 9.1 13.83 14.48 10.99 11.59 12.21 13.82 11.13 9.6 12 11.94 13.68 11.38 12.5 13.66 10.45 9.05 8.99 12.78 10.64 12.76 10.99

Table 1 Countries and data included in this study. Country Happiness 20002008 7.5 7.7 5.3 7.3 7.4 4.4 7.6 6.8 8.1 6.5 7.2 6.4 5.9 7.5 6.7 6.4 8 7.3 7.7 6.4 5.7 5.5 6.8 6 5.9 7.2 7.7 8.1 5.5 7.1 7 7.2

Argentina Australia Bangladesh Belgium Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile Colombia France Germany Greece India Ireland Israel Japan Mexico New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Romania Singapore South Africa South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United Kingdom United States Venezuela

Though the competitiveness motive scores of countries were not collected at the same year as other variables, Kirkcaldy, Furnham, and Levins study (2001) also applied similar method in running analyses using variable of work attitude found in Lynns study (1991) and measures of pace of life found in Levine and Norenzayans study (1999). Moreover, as mentioned in Hofstedes study (2001), having high or low competitiveness motive is considered as characteristics of people, children or adults, of certain cultures, and characteristics and values of cultures may be modied, but they are difcult to change. Similarly to the method of this study, many studies applied Hofstedes cultural dimensions, which were collected decades ago, to nd associations with variables that were currently collected (Chan & Cheung, 2008; Cheung & Chan, 2010). Therefore, using competitiveness motive scores across countries should be appropriate in analyzing the dependent variables of this study. 2.1. Data analyses In terms of analysis, correlations will be run for the six variables of this study. Then, several multiple regression analyses will be run. For example, competitiveness motive will be used as independent variable to predict public health and education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004. In addition, competitiveness motive and public health and education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004 will be applied as independent variables to predict happiness across countries. Finally, Sobel test will be conducted to see if public health or education expenditures as percentage of GDP have a mediation effect or not between competitiveness motive and happiness 20002008. 3. Results First, correlation analysis was conducted. The competitiveness motive was negatively and signicantly correlated with public health expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004, public education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004, and happiness 20012008, with an r ranging from .46 to .58. The correlations between public health expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004 (r = .96) and between public education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004 (r = .90) were very high. Happiness 20002008 was positively and moderately correlated with public health expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2001 and public education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004. Correlation results are shown in Table 2. Please cite this article in press as: Cheung, H. Y., & Chan, A.W.H. The relationship of competitiveness motive on peoples happiness through education. International Journal of Intercultural Relations (2010), doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2010.11.008

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Table 2 Correlation results amongst the variables.

1. Happiness 20002008 2. Public health expenditure as % of GDP in 2001 3. Public health expenditure as % of GDP in 2004 4. Public education expenditure as % of GDP in 2001 5. Public education expenditure as % of GDP in 2004 6. Competitiveness motive
* **

1.00 .63** .70** .57**

1.00 .90** .46*

1.00 .58**

1.00

Correlation is signicant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). Correlation is signicant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table 3 Regression analysis model predicting public health expenditure as % of GDP in 2001. Variables Competitiveness motive Note: R2 = .32; B .70 SE B .19 .57***

R2 = .30 (***p .001; **p .01; *p .05).

Table 4 Regression analysis model predicting public health expenditure as % of GDP in 2004. Variables Competitiveness motive Note: R2 = .32; B .79 SE B .21 .57***

R2 = .30 (***p .001; **p .01; *p .05).

Table 5 Regression analysis model predicting public education expenditure as % of GDP in 2001. Variables Competitiveness motive Note: R2 = .22; B .38 SE B .14 .46**

R2 = .19 (***p .001; **p .01; *p .05).

Table 6 Regression analysis model predicting public education expenditure as % of GDP in 2004. Variables Competitiveness motive Note: R2 = .33; B .47 SE B .13 .58***

R2 = .31 (***p .001; **p .01; *p .05).

Different regression analysis models were run using remove selection. Tables 36 present the results with competitiveness motive entered as independent variable into the models. Tables 3 and 4 show that approximately 32% of the total variance in public health expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004 was predicted by the competitiveness motive. The slopes of the two models were negative, with p .001. Tables 5 and 6 show that the competitiveness motive was able to predict 22% and 33% of the total variance in public education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004, respectively. Again, the slopes for predicting public education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004 were negative, with p .001. As public health and education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004 were signicantly correlated with happiness 20002008, they were entered into regression analysis models to predict the happiness 20002008 variable. Table 7 presents the results with public health and education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001, as independent variables, entered into the regression analysis model. Both independent variables were insignicant. However, for Table 8, when public health and education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2004, as independent variables, entered into the regression analysis model, public education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2004 was able to signicantly predict 42% of the total variance in happiness 20002008. The slope was positive with p .001. As the competitiveness motive was also signicantly correlated with happiness 20002008, both public education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2004 and competitiveness motive were entered into the model as independent variables,
Table 7 Regression analysis model predicting happiness 20002008. Variables Public health expenditure as % of GDP in 2001 Public education expenditure as % of GDP in 2001 Note: R2 = .22; R2 = .16 (*** p .001; ** p .01; *p .05). B .14 .17 SE B .11 .16 .28 .24

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Table 8 Regression analysis model predicting happiness 20002008. Variables Public health expenditure as % of GDP in 2004 Public education expenditure as % of GDP in 2004 Note: R2 = .42; R2 = .38 (***p .001; **p .01; *p .05).

Table 9 Regression analysis model predicting happiness 20002008. Variables Competitiveness motive Public education expenditure as % of GDP in 2004 Note: R2 = .47; R2 = .42 (***p .001; **p .01; *p .05). B .15 .34 SE B .10 .12 .27 .49**

and the results are shown in Table 9. Again, only public education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2004 was able to signicantly predict happiness 20002008. Based on the result above that public education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2004 was signicant in predicting happiness 20002008, Sobel test (Sobel, 1982) was applied to test if public education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2004 had a mediation effect between competitiveness motive and happiness 20002008 or not. The following two models were applied for the Sobel test: Model 1 : Model 2 : where Yi is the happiness level for the country (ith); Xi is the competitiveness motive for the country (ith); Mi is the public expenditure on education 2004 for the country (ith). Regression results showed that: Estimated a = 0.469 with standard error = 0.128, Estimated b = 0.339 with standard error = 0.121, Sobel test statistics = 2.226 with standard error = 0.071 and p-value = 0.026 < 0.05. Hence, the mediation effect of public education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2004 was statistically signicant at 5% level. 4. Discussion As hypothesized, the competitiveness motive was able to negatively predict public expenditures on health and education based on percentages of GDP across countries and across two time periods. Kirkcaldy, Furnham, and Lynn (1992) found that this motive was positively correlated with attitude to saving. They described attitude to saving as the value attached to saving. People who scored high on this variable saved money as a form of security against future misfortunes. Items that tested attitude to saving included I do nancial planning for the future and I follow a careful nancial budget (Romero & Kleiner, 2000, p. 15).When people believe that money is valuable and that it is important to save money, their expenditure on different items is carefully planned and monitored. This may be why countries that scored high in the competitiveness motive had lower levels of health and education expenditures based on percentage of GDP. In Van de Vliert, Kluwer, and Lynns study (2000), most countries that scored high on the competitiveness motive scored low in economic wealth (i.e., had low GDPs) but high in economic growth. These poorer countries that aimed for economic growth were especially concerned about their economic competitiveness. Strategic, structural and process innovation are necessary for countries to do better than other countries economically, and thus, people with a strong competitiveness motive may spend money on items that are useful for beating or chasing up their competitors. On a country level, spending money on items that have explicit positive impacts on GDP and economic growth is encouraged in order to successfully compete with other countries. As mentioned, for countries to be competitive in international markets, money must be spent on areas related to economic development, such as research and development (Varsakelis, 2001). Other investment areas that explicitly inuence economic growth include technology and nance (Mattoo, Rathindran, & Subramian, 2006). Public education and health services are sometimes considered to be unproductive sectors of the economy (Grier & Tullock, 1989; Kormendi & Meguire, 1985; Summers & Heston, 1988); hence, the percentages of GDP spent on these areas may be lower, Please cite this article in press as: Cheung, H. Y., & Chan, A.W.H. The relationship of competitiveness motive on peoples happiness through education. International Journal of Intercultural Relations (2010), doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2010.11.008 Yi = c0 + c1 Xi + bMi + i Mi = d0 + aXi + i

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as they are unproductive items, or expenditure on these services may be the rst to be cut when the economy is bad (Devarajan, Swaroop, & Zou, 1996). The impact of education and health care on economic growth is often ignored because the outcomes may not be immediate and explicit (Fielding, 2002). To predict average happiness scores across countries, public health expenditure and education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2001 and 2004 were entered into the regression analysis models. Although public health and education expenditures as percentage of GDP in 2001 were found to be signicantly correlated with happiness 20002008, Table 8 shows that public education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2004 was able to predict happiness 20002008. Table 9 shows the results when both the competitiveness motive and public education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2004 were entered into the regression analysis model. Again, public education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2004 was so strong that it captured the prediction of the competitiveness motive on happiness 20002008. Further examined by Sobel test, public education expenditure as percentage of GDP in 2004 had a mediation effect between competitiveness motive and happiness 20002008 across countries. This result proved that hypothesis 4 was correct. The nding of this study that the relationship between the competitiveness motive and happiness is negative is consistent with the nding of Kirkcaldy et al. (2001) that people with high subjective well-being scores were less competitive. It is important to understand the negative relationship between competitiveness and happiness. This study provides an answer, in that the governments of competitive countries, which are usually low in national wealth, are found to spend less money on public services, such as public education and health, as a percentage of their GDP. Lower expenditure on public education has been found to be a predictor for lower levels of happiness across countries. In fact, many studies show a relationship between happiness and education. For example, Veenhoven (1996) found that education was correlated strongly (and positively) with happiness scores in poor nations and weakly in rich nations. Research indicates a strong relationship between public spending and social indicators, but only a weak relationship for public spending on total health care (Baldacci, Guin-Sui, & de Mello, 2003). In countries for which social indicators are high, people are found to be happier because happiness is affected by quality of life to a certain degree (Diener & Suh, 1997). Interestingly, in the current study, the most recent data on public education, education expenditure in 2004, totally captured the other variables to be the major predictor of happiness. Some may think that if a country spends more money on education, then the income of its citizens will increase and thus the happiness of those people will be enhanced. In fact, the relationship between education expenditure and happiness goes beyond this economic explanation. Education is considered to be a basic human right (Bellamy, 1999). When more money is spent on education, more children have the opportunity to receive education. In this way, the basic right of education is met, societal inequality is reduced, and happiness is achievable (Sengupta, 2002). Moreover, greater expenditure on education leads to better school facilities, better-qualied teachers, lower teacherpupil ratios and eventually, better academic achievement (Cheung & Chan, 2008). When students achieve higher academic performance, higher satisfaction and happiness result. Other studies argue that public expenditure on education represents an investment in human capital from which people benet through a higher degree of condence (Hessami, 2008). Explaining the relationship between education expenditure and happiness, OShea (1999) noted that greater expenditure on education increases individuals self-respect. For example, when people have self-respect, they have a greater degree of self-belief or condence to achieve their life plans without being disrupted by feelings of self-doubt and failure. This can lead to individuals feeling worthwhile and appreciated by others, and thus, happy. Overall, when individuals are unable to receive education, it is difcult for them to develop the self-respect vital to their well-being. In sum, the results of this study showed that countries that scored high on the competitiveness motive had lower levels of expenditure on public services, based on percentages of GDP spent on education and health, and that in countries that had lower levels of expenditure on education, people were less happy. These results are based on the data of 32 countries. 5. Limitations and further studies For limitations, this study only included 32 regions and there are still many countries missing and the study only included years of 2001 and 2004. Thus, it would be worth studying the results of different and more updated years when the data from the World Bank is available. Moreover, other controlled or intervening variables could be included, for example, government spending on other public services, countries GDP, economic growth, and etc. Further studies could also include the level of human right of each country as independent variable so as to clarify the association between expenditure on public services and happiness across countries. Finally, the data sets on public health expenditure and public education expenditure as % of GDP in 2001 and 2004 were collected from the websites of World Bank. There may be a chance that World Bank would revise or remove the data from the websites. References
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Please cite this article in press as: Cheung, H. Y., & Chan, A.W.H. The relationship of competitiveness motive on peoples happiness through education. International Journal of Intercultural Relations (2010), doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2010.11.008