TY - JOUR
T1 - Enriching Lives
T2 - How Spending Time with Pets is Related to the Experiential Well-Being of Older Americans
AU - Kalenkoski, Charlene M.
AU - Korankye, Thomas
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Nana Twum Owusu-Peprah for excellent research assistance and Karen S. Hamrick and Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia for their valuable comments and suggestions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) and Springer Nature B.V.
PY - 2022/4
Y1 - 2022/4
N2 - This study examines how caring for pets and walking, exercising, or playing with pets is associated with the experiential well-being of older Americans using activity-episode-level data from the 2010, 2012, and 2013 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS) and their associated Well-Being Modules (WBM). Estimating a series of ordered probit models that relate various measures of experiential well-being to different measures of pet-related activities, the results show that caring for pets is associated with greater meaning than other activities, controlling for a standard set of demographic and other person-level characteristics. Walking, exercising, or playing with household pets or animals is associated with greater happiness and meaning and less stress relative to other activities. The results from sensitivity analyses show that the magnitudes of the associations for people who live alone are larger than for those who live with others.
AB - This study examines how caring for pets and walking, exercising, or playing with pets is associated with the experiential well-being of older Americans using activity-episode-level data from the 2010, 2012, and 2013 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS) and their associated Well-Being Modules (WBM). Estimating a series of ordered probit models that relate various measures of experiential well-being to different measures of pet-related activities, the results show that caring for pets is associated with greater meaning than other activities, controlling for a standard set of demographic and other person-level characteristics. Walking, exercising, or playing with household pets or animals is associated with greater happiness and meaning and less stress relative to other activities. The results from sensitivity analyses show that the magnitudes of the associations for people who live alone are larger than for those who live with others.
KW - Americans
KW - Experiential well-being
KW - Older adults
KW - Pet care
KW - Time use
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099031027&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85099031027&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11482-020-09908-0
DO - 10.1007/s11482-020-09908-0
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85099031027
SN - 1871-2584
VL - 17
SP - 489
EP - 510
JO - Applied Research in Quality of Life
JF - Applied Research in Quality of Life
IS - 2
ER -