Journal of Happiness Studies (2024) 25:5

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-024-00727-w

RESEARCH PAPER

Artificial Intelligence Perceptions and Life Satisfaction

Tim Hinks1

Accepted: 19 December 2023 / Published online: 23 January 2024

© The Author(s) 2024

Abstract
The paper estimates whether there is any relationship between life satisfaction and peo-
ple’s perceptions towards artificial intelligence. Using data from 39 European countries
collected in 2021, it is consistently found that people with negative perceptions report
lower life satisfaction. This finding is robust across a number of robustness checks. This
provides further evidence that people may fear some new technologies, in this case artifi-
cial intelligence, which adds weight to governments needing to establish moratoriums to
openly discuss what the objectives of new science, technologies and innovations are and
how best to manage and steer policy and regulation to achieve these objectives.

Keywords Life satisfaction · Artificial intelligence and automation · Fear

JEL Classification O33 · I31 · C21

1 Introduction

Every day there are new revelations about what new scientific, technological and innova-
tive (STI) developments can and will do and what this means for the economic landscape.
As with previous technological upheavals, much of the focus is on labour markets implica-
tions.1 Large firms are already expecting to make large-scale redundancies or cease hiring
for certain roles as tasks become increasingly automated.2 Research into the impact robots
have had on labour markets paints a bleak picture of falling employment, falling wages

1
Autor and Dorn (2013) more recent citations here show that computerisation eroded wages and labour
relocated to largely low-skill/pay service occupations with evidence of a hallowing out of the middle-skilled
occupations.
2
IBM announced recently it will cease hiring for approximately 8,000 roles that it thinks can now be per-
formed by artificial intelligence. British Telecommunications (BT) expects to reduce its workforce by 40 per

Tim Hinks
[email protected]
1
Bristol Research in Economics (BRE), University of the West of England, Coldharbour Lane,
Bristol BS16 1QY, UK

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5 Page 2 of 14 T. Hinks

and increasing wage inequality (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2020; Graetz & Michaels, 2018;
Dauth et al., 2021; Aksoy et al., 2021; de Vries et al., 2020). As yet it is less clear whether
the increased adoption of robots has had any positive job creation effects through raising
productivity of firms who adopt this technology or through a process of creative destruction.
Researchers have now begun to shift attention towards blockchain, Big Data and artificial
intelligence (AI). At this stage there is no hard data on what new STI are being adopted
or the speed of adoption. This has resulted in a variety of methods and data being used to
capture the impact of STIs on labour markets, with a particular focus on AI. Acemoglu et al.
(2022) analyse the impact of AI on the labour demanded by AI-using firms in the US using
different labour skills taxonomies and online job vacancy data. They find evidence that these
firms have reduced their demand for labour, while there is a degree of AI substituting for
tasks which can result in new tasks emerging for employees. They find no aggregate effect
on wages or employment at industry or occupation-level. Other work uses information on
labour-saving patents and taxonomies of skills to predict likely impacts on labour demand
through substitutability (Mann and Püttmann, 2023; Montobbio et al., 2021) and finds con-
sistent evidence of new STIs substituting for tasks and sometime occupations.
In contrast to these footprint-type methods, Babina et al. (2020) and Alekseeva et al.
(2021) study the direct association between AI adoption and employment at firm and indus-
try-level. Both find that in the US, larger firms benefit more from adopting AI. Babina et
al. (ibid.) also find that firms with elements of market power (e.g. higher mark-ups, greater
R&D intensity) are more likely to invest in AI and that these firms have higher rates of
growth. Regarding labour demand the authors conclude those local labour markets with
higher educated workforces and higher wages experience higher rates of AI-skill hiring,
which means, ceteris paribus, increased inequality in labour markets.
Some work has also attempted to understand the impact new STI is having and will have
on labour itself, with a focus on those most at risk and who require new training/re-training
to compete or complement with new STI (Jaimovich et al., 2021; Illanes et al., 2018; Cas-
selman & Satariano, 2019). Again, this is presently in its infancy with it being unclear what
the quantity and quality of occupations and jobs will look like in the coming years. Workers
who have been impacted by recent automation do not report their lives to be universally
better or worse off, instead the impact of automation varies. Matching data from the General
Society Survey on quality of work with O*NET data on tasks and occupations most at risk
from automation, Nazereno and Schiff (2021) find some evidence that aspects of quality of
work, such as job stress, are negatively impacted by risk of automation while other aspects
(e.g. job satisfaction), are not. Previous research analysing the relationship between humans
and machines has also found a negative effects on workers’ mental wellbeing through acting
as a stressor (Robelski & Wischniewski, 2018; Körner et al., 2019; Szalma & Taylor, 2011).
Gornay and Woodard (2020) find evidence that jobs most at risk from automation are asso-
ciated with lower job satisfaction in both the US and Europe although workers perceptions
of the subjective worth of their job mitigate this association. Gihleb et al. (2022) argue that
increased robot penetration creates pressure and fear in US workers that has detrimental
effects on workers’ mental health but that there is no relationship between robot penetration
and mental health, job satisfaction and life satisfaction in Germany.

cent (55,000 jobs) by 2030. Wendy’s fast-food chain is training voice-recognition AI to staff its drive-though
outlets. AI is already being used to generate news content (e.g. VentureBeat).

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Another aspect of this research that remains in its infancy is how people perceive the
impact STI will have on them and others today and in the future. These perceptions and
expectations of people with respect to new STI are an important area of research for several
reasons. Firstly, these perceptions will determine how resistant or embracing workers will
be to firms adopting STI (Bhargava et al., 2021). These perceptions may also determine
which new training and skills are required for current and future workers. Thirdly, these per-
ceptions will impact whether people want more or less regulation of new STI and people’s
preferences on other possible interventions (Busemeyer et al., 2023; Busemeyer & Sahm,
2021; Kurer & Hausermann, 2021). Fourthly, if people’s perceptions of new STI are nega-
tive then this could well result in greater uncertainty, anxiety and fear both now and in the
future.
One way in which researchers have analysed these relationships is through studying peo-
ple’s perceptions and experiences of working alongside new technologies and self-reported
well-being. Cambre and Cook (1985) found employees working alongside and with com-
puters reported greater levels of fear at work and greater fear about these new technologies
on their lives. Aghion et al. (2016) were the first to model the expected impact of new
technologies on subjective well-being through job turnover, job creation and job destruction
rates. They found that higher job turnover increased well-being, after controlling for local
unemployment rates, arguing that this signalled higher economic growth rates and higher
chances of the unemployed finding a job. Job creation and destruction were associated
with higher and lower well-being respectively. Schwabe and Castellacci (2020) find that
increased robotic automation is associated with a greater fear of replacement amongst work-
ers which causes a significant reduction in job satisfaction though only for non-degree hold-
ers. Recent work by Dekker et al. (2017) and Hinks (2021), analyse whether there is a direct
association between people who are more fearful of robots with respect to future employ-
ment and current life satisfaction. Both papers find evidence of a negative relationship.
Giuntella, et al. (2023) find evidence that German workers, particularly those in medium-
skilled jobs, who are highly exposed to artificial intelligence suffer a relative decline in both
life and job satisfaction and that these workers are more concerned about their job security
and economic situation. This paper contributes to this small but growing empirical literature
that focusses on how people perceive automation and AI and whether this is associated with
self-reported life satisfaction.
We find evidence that holding negative perceptions towards automation and AI corre-
lates with significantly lower life satisfaction. This result is robust to a number of model
specifications including considering people’s average perceptions towards other scientific
and technological innovations. Some will argue that such findings are not important since
these negative perceptions are misplaced. Some others will argue these perceptions do not
matter since these changes are imminent so people will have to adapt as has happened in
previous technological revolutions. Others will argue that the state and civil society should
immediately try and limit the economic disruption caused by these new technologies. Many
though will find some middle ground in which the fears of citizens form part of regional
and national moratoriums on what new STI will mean and whether there is a need to steer
how and where these new technologies are used in line with a framework of responsible
innovation.3

3
The political economy of how these discussions are formed and the power of the different agents in
these discussions is relatively under-researched at present, notably about the impact that country-specific

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5 Page 4 of 14 T. Hinks

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents the data and vari-
ables used. Section 3 presents the results. These are discussed in Sect. 4 as are the limita-
tions of the study. We end with a conclusion.

2 Data, Variables and Descriptive Statistics

We use data from Eurobarometer 95.2 survey conducted between April-May 2021, which
was a follow-up survey to Eurobarometer 81.5 survey in June 2014 that focussed on how
science and technology is perceived in Europe. This survey asks over 20 questions about
people’s views, perceptions and knowledge of science of technology. 38 countries were
included in the survey including the 27 EU member states with the majority of countries
interviewing approximately 1,000 individuals over the age of 15. A multi-stage, random
probability sample design was used and in each country a number of sampling points was
drawn with probability proportional to population size (for a total coverage of the country)
and to population density. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, interviews were conducted within
countries either face-to-face, sometimes with a mix of face-to-face and computer assisted
web interviews (CAWI) and sometimes using purely CAWI.

2.1 Dependent Variable

In keeping with other Eurobarometer surveys life satisfaction is captured by the question
“On the whole, are you very satisfied = 1, fairly satisfied = 2, not very satisfied = 3 or not at
all satisfied = 4 with the life you lead?”. After recoding the answers so higher life satisfaction
was given a higher value the average life satisfaction reported from our sample was 3.04
across all countries, indicating that on average people were fairly satisfied with the lives
they lead Women represented just over 50 per cent of our sample and the average age was
just over 47 years.

2.2 Variables of Interest

The first question of interest is the agreeableness of people with the statement “Artificial
intelligence and automation will create more jobs than they will eliminate”. There are five
possible responses ranging from totally agree (= 1) to totally disagree (= 5). This question
relates AI and automation directly to people’s livelihoods and maybe interpreted as people
themselves thinking they may be threatened by job losses through AI and automation. Some
people may also have experienced or witnessed AI and automation in a workplace that

responses have on other countries e.g. high-income on middle and low income countries. Given the recent
headlines of AI representing another potential existential crisis for humanity there are now stronger voices
from within the AI-generating sector itself for all parties in countries (public, private and civil) to discuss
and thrash-out regulatory frameworks to discuss what these new technologies mean presently and will likely
mean in the future for citizens and society as a whole. One aspect of this that needs considerable attention
is the current powers of the state in many countries which are more limited than previously in history due
to the neo-liberal approach to global capitalism that has encouraged and produced economically and politi-
cally powerful conglomerates and institutions which prize the highest private return over wider societal
objectives. An old narrative has formed pitching the innovation and growth creating private sector against
the interfering, regulatory state but at the same time large tech companies have recently called for greater
regulation of the sector.

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Artificial Intelligence Perceptions and Life Satisfaction Page 5 of 14 5

resulted in job losses. Given this we would expect people who disagree with this statement
to report lower life satisfaction.
The second question of interest asks “Do you think Artificial Intelligence will have a
positive, a negative or no effect on our way of life in the next 20 years?” with responses
ranging from very positive (= 1) to very negative (= 4).4 This question likely captures a more
general fear of AI amongst people regarding many different aspects of life including work.
Since it is framed over a 20-year period though, it might reasonably be expected to not cor-
relate with current life satisfaction because of a low discount rate (check this).

4
For this question the response “no effect” was originally recorded as 5. We recoded responses so that no
effect was 3, “negative effect” was 4 and “very negative effect” was 5.

Table 1 Descriptive statistics for Frequency Percentage

main variables of interest
Panel A
Artificial intelligence and automation
will create more jobs than they will
eliminate
Totally Agree 2,933 8.49
Agree 7,520 21.76
Neither Agree or Disagree 10,132 29.32
Disagree 9,341 27.04
Totally Disagree 4,625 13.39
Do you think AI will have a positive, a
negative or no effect on our way of life
in the next 20 years?
Very positive effect 6,482 18.76
Positive effect 15,862 45.91
No effect 1,062 3.07
Negative effect 7,807 22.6
Very negative effect 3,338 9.66
Panel B
Mean Std Dev
Artificial intelligence and automation 3.151 1.158
will create more jobs than they will
eliminate (totally agree = 1, totally
disagree = 5)
Do you think AI will have a positive, 2.585 1.284
a negative or no effect on our way of
life in the next 20 years? (very positive
effect = 1, very negative effect = 5)
Dummy variable = 1 if disagree or 0.404 0.491
totally disagree with the statement
“Artificial intelligence and automation
will create more jobs than they will
eliminate”, = 0 otherwise
Dummy variable = 1 if you think AI will 0.323 0.467
have a fairly negative or very negative
effect on our way of life in the next 20
years, = 0 otherwise.
Sample Size 34,551

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The frequency of responses to the two questions are provided in Panel A of Table 1.
Panel B provides average responses to the two questions with both means around the mid-
dle category. We also created dummy variables for both of the questions, where negative
responses = 1, otherwise = 0. That 40.4 per cent of our sample disagree or strongly disagree
that AI and automation will create more jobs than it destroys whilst 30.3 per cent agree or
strongly agree that job creation will outstrip job destruction reflects the concerns people
have with this technology. Far fewer people think negatively towards the impact AI will
have on our future way of life (32.3 per cent) with the majority thinking there will be posi-
tive effects on our way of life (64.7 per cent).5

2.3 Control Variables

In line with the empirical happiness economics literature we control for age, age-squared,
gender, education category, marital status, economic activity, religious group, household
size and whether born abroad. There is no specific question about household income or earn-
ings. Instead, we create 3 categories in response to whether people have found it difficult
to pay household bills in the last month. To capture other material aspects of the person’s
or the household’s life we include a subjective social class term. We also take advantage of
questions unique to the survey that may mitigate the effect that views about new STI have
on life satisfaction. We include a categorical variable that captures peoples scores on eleven
yes/no science questions. Those who score more highly may hold new STI in a more posi-
tive light. Alternatively, it can be argued that being more informed about science can lead to
people being more fearful. Familiarity with STI may also influence people’s perceptions of
STI, so we include a dummy variable for whether a family member(s) had ever worked in
the research, science, technology and innovation development field.

3 Method and Results

We estimate the life satisfaction equations using ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions
rather than ordered logit or ordered probit models since the estimated coefficients are more
or less equivalent according to Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters (2004). It is important to stress
that these estimations cannot be interpreted as causal. Whilst people who feel more negative
towards AI and automation are likely to report less life satisfaction it is also feasible that
people’s life satisfaction can cause them to have particular views about new technologies.6

5
A surprising result is that people who think there will be no effect comprise just 3.1 per cent of our sample,
Frequently the neutral option in these questions has the highest proportion of respondents or near the high-
est proportion. To have the lowest proportion calls into question our recoding of this question if we were to
use all responses in our empirical section. To overcome this is less of an issue if we use the dummy variable
created instead.
6
There are many examples in the well-being and life satisfaction literature of research overcoming issues of
causality by using panel data (Böckerman & Ilmakunnas, 2009; Marcus, 2013). Being restricted to a cross-
sectional data set means to test for causality we would need an instrument that predicted views towards AI
and automation but did not directly correlate with life satisfaction. Typically, such instruments capture local
effects that would cause the persons views or actions and only through this mechanism would impact life
satisfaction.

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Artificial Intelligence Perceptions and Life Satisfaction Page 7 of 14 5

Table 2 Life satisfaction and perceptions of science, technology and innovation

Variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
LS LS LS LS LS LS
Disagree with the -0.074** -0.047* -0.069*** -0.071*** -0.051***
statement “Artificial (0.030) (0.027) (0.015) (0.015) (0.012)
intelligence and
automation will create
more jobs than they
will eliminate”=1, 0
otherwise
AI will have a nega- -0.126*** -0.114*** -0.093*** -0.080*** -0.058***
tive effect on our way (0.026) (0.023) (0.021) (0.020) (0.016)
of life in the next 20
years = 1, 0 otherwise.
Country Dummies no no no yes yes yes
Science and no no no no yes yes
Technology
Demographic and no no no no no yes
Socio-economic
controls
Constant 3.052*** 3.062*** 3.077*** 3.092*** 2.898*** 3.483***
(0.044) (0.041) (0.045) (0.013) (0.033) (0.050)
Observations 34,551 34,551 34,551 34,551 34,551 34,551
R-squared 0.003 0.007 0.008 0.125 0.131 0.242
Notes: Reference groups are males, married, manual employee, Catholic, single person household, never
or almost never unable to pay a bill at the end of a month and not born abroad. Robust standard errors in
parentheses. Clustered at country level ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1

We choose to use dummy variables that capture negative views of AI in our two variables
of interest for ease of interpretation of any correlation with life satisfaction.7 In Table 2 we
initially regress life satisfaction onto the dummy for AI and automation having a positive
effect on net-job creation. Those who disagree with this statement report 7.4% point loss in
life satisfaction. In model 2 we control for the dummy on AI impact on way of life in the
next 20-years. Those who views AI negatively report a 12.6% point loss in life satisfaction.
When both variables are included (model 3) the size of our AI and automation dummy
declines significantly and is significant only at the 10 per cent level.8 The estimated coef-
ficient on the AI impact on way of life dummy falls insignificantly an remains significant
at the 1 per cent level. This indicates a degree of overlap between the two variables but that
they are both directly correlated with life satisfaction.
When country fixed effects are included our variables of interest remain negatively and
significantly correlated with life satisfaction. When additional variables capturing scientific
knowledge and family employment links to science and technology are controlled for in
model 5 there is no impact on our main findings. Finally in model 6 we control for demo-
graphic and economic factors which, from previous work, we would expect to correlate
with life satisfaction. The inclusion of these controls reduces the size of both the estimated

7
When we instead use numeric responses to the questions or control for each response category our main
results do not change. When controlling for each categorical response, the estimated coefficients monotoni-
cally increase in size with those having the most negative views on AI reporting significantly lower life
satisfaction relative to people with the most positive views. These results are available upon request.
8
The chi-squared statistic is 22.51.

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5 Page 8 of 14 T. Hinks

Table 3 Life satisfaction and Variables (1) (2) (3)

perceptions of AI and automation
LS LS LS
by different country groupings
Disagree with the statement -0.061*** -0.050** -0.029
“Artificial intelligence and au- (0.017) (0.017) (0.020)
tomation will create more jobs
than they will eliminate”=1, 0
otherwise
Notes: Reference groups are AI will have a negative effect -0.078*** -0.063** 0.020
males, no education, married, on our way of life in the next 20 (0.015) (0.023) (0.053)
manual employee, Catholic, years = 1, 0 otherwise.
single person household, Constant 3.340*** 3.338*** 3.749***
never or almost never unable (0.060) (0.079) (0.129)
to pay a bill at the end of a Observations 18,100 10,573 5,642
month. Robust standard errors
R-squared 0.236 0.206 0.203
in parentheses ***p < 0.01,
**p < 0.05, *p < 0.1 Number of Countries 21 11 7

coefficients on our variables of interest, but they remain negative and significant at the 1
per cent level.9
The estimated coefficients on the controls are in line with the life satisfaction literature.
Life satisfaction is U-shaped in age. People living in larger households report higher life
satisfaction. People who have difficulty paying monthly bills are significantly less satisfied
with life compared to people who have no difficulty. The self-employed report higher life
satisfaction compared to manual workers and people who are unemployed report signifi-
cantly lower life satisfaction. People who are born abroad report lower life satisfaction and
people in a higher social class are more satisfied with life. Religious group also matters
for life satisfaction with Protestants reporting higher life satisfaction than Catholics while
Orthodox Christians and agnostics report lower satisfaction.10
Though we control for country-level effects by including country dummy variables these
fail to consider broader regional factors that are exclusive to groups of countries. In the
literature on life satisfaction, for example, there is evidence that people in ex-communist
countries still report lower life satisfaction compared to people living in Western Euro-
pean countries (e.g. Guriev & Zhuravskaya, 2009; Guriev & Melnikov, 2017) with possible
explanations being poorer institutional quality (Nikolova & Sanfey, 2016) and corruption
(Djankov et al. 2016; Amini and Douarin, 2020). In line with this reasoning, we split our
sample into three distinct geo-political groups that capture historical differences, Western
European countries, ex-communist countries and Balkan countries. Results in Table 3 indi-
cate that for Western and Ex-communist countries the negative views people have towards
AI is associated with lower life satisfaction. This association is not apparent in the Balkans
countries.
An alternative and arguably less ad hoc method for capturing between country differ-
ences is to use multi-level modelling. In the literature it is suggested that multilevel model-
ling is appropriate when intraclass correlations (ICC) exceed 0.05 (Hayes, 2006) with ICC
values exceeding 0.15 considered large (Hox, 2010). When we run an intercept only multi-

9
We ran a stepwise regression for model 6 to test whether all our variables were valuable in predicting life
satisfaction. This revealed that the education dummies added nothing significant to the model and were
dropped from model 6 and all subsequent models.
10
The full set of results for all the models in the paper are available upon request but are not include here
for reasons of space.

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Artificial Intelligence Perceptions and Life Satisfaction Page 9 of 14 5

Table 4 Life satisfaction and perceptions of new STI (multi-level models)

Variables (1) (4) (7) (10) (13)
LS LS LS LS LS
Disagree with the statement “Artificial intel- -0.050*** -0.051*** -0.051*** -0.053*** -
ligence and automation will create more jobs (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) 0.053***
than they will eliminate”=1, 0 otherwise (0.007)
AI will have a negative effect on our way of -0.059*** -0.059*** -0.059*** -0.058*** -
life in the next 20 years = 1, 0 otherwise. (0.007) (0.007) (0.007) (0.008) 0.058***
(0.008)
Ln GDP per capita 0.107*** 0.150***
(0.028) (0.050)
Ut Rate -0.007 0.004
(0.006) (0.007)
AI Govt Read 0.007*** -0.001
(0.002) (0.004)
Constant 3.466*** 2.365*** 3.518*** 3.015*** 1.963***
(0.050) (0.291) (0.068) (0.150) (0.393)
Observations 34,551 34,551 34,551 32,816 32,816
Number of groups 39 39 39 37 37
Notes: Reference groups are males, married, manual employee, Catholic, single person household, never
or almost never unable to pay a bill at the end of a month. Model 1 excludes Cyprus-TCC and Models 5 and
6 exclude Cyprus-TCC and Kosovo because no information was available for government AI readiness.
Robust standard errors in parentheses ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1

level model the ICC meant that 11.4 per cent of the total variation in individual LS was due
to country-level variation. We report the multi-level estimates in Table 4. In models 2–4 we
include separate country-level variables for log of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita
and the unemployment rate. In keeping with previous research, we expect the former to be
positively related to life satisfaction and the latter to be negatively related. In model 5 we
include country measures from the 2021 Government AI Readiness Index. It is expected
that greater readiness mitigates views towards AI.
We see from all the model specifications that our two variables of interest are still nega-
tively related to life satisfaction. Regarding our country-level controls only log GDP per
capita has the expected sign and is significant.

4 Discussion & Limitations

It is apparent from the above results that people’s views towards AI appear to correlate with
current life satisfaction. These findings are consistent with the literature on how people’s
views on new technologies relate to life satisfaction and to job satisfaction (Dekker et al.,
2017; Schwabe & Castellacci, 2020; Hinks, 2021; Giuntella et al., 2023). That people’s
views about AI specifically can mean a decline in life satisfaction is a new finding in the
literature. It suggests that, as with many new technologies, there is uncertainty about what
it will mean for jobs with people possibly fearing technological unemployment but also
people fearing the impact on their lives more broadly.
As stated previously a potential issue with research into life satisfaction is that of simul-
taneity. It is possible that people with lower life satisfaction scores are more likely to hold
negative views about many different aspects of life including the impact of new STIs. In

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order to capture these underlying attitudes towards new STIs we estimate a life satisfaction
equation including relative measures of our two variables of interest. We do so by dividing
the score for each of our statements of interest by the average score across a number of dif-
ferent but related statements regarding science and technology and with regard to specific
new technologies.
The relative term for views regarding AI and automation having a net positive effect
on employment was calculated by dividing the score to this question by the average score
across eight other statements about science including whether people agreed that “thanks
to scientific and technological advances, the Earth’s natural resourced will be inexhaust-
ible”, and “thanks to science and technology, there will be more opportunities for future
generations”.11
The relative term for AI impacting negatively on our way lives in the next 20 years, was
calculated by dividing the score of to this question (1 = very positive effect, 5 = very nega-
tive effect) by the average score across 9 identical questions but with respect to other new
technologies. These were solar energy, wind energy, information and communication tech-
nology, brain and cognitive enhancement, vaccines and combatting infectious diseases, bio-
technology and genetic engineering, space exploration, nanotechnology and nuclear energy
for energy production.
Table 5 shows that when included by themselves the two relative terms continue to show
a negative association with life satisfaction, but the size of the coefficient on the relative
term for AI and way of life has fallen indicating that some of the negative effect in previous
models is capturing a general negative effect towards the other new technologies listed. In
the final model the relative AI and way of life term is insignificant. This indicates a degree
of collinearity between the two relative terms and that people with a higher relatively nega-
tive view on AI and automation on net employment growth report lower life satisfaction.
To illustrate the robustness of this result to heterogeneity across the countries, we tested
whether our result from Model 1, Table 5 was masking a specific country effect by removing
one country at a time. The estimated coefficient on the relative AI and automation variable

Table 5 Life satisfaction and Variables (1) (2) (3)

relative measures of views on AI
LS LS LS
and automation
Relative value: Artificial intel- -0.082*** -
ligence and automation will (0.020) 0.074***
create more jobs than they will (0.019)
eliminate
Notes: Reference groups Relative value: AI will have a -0.020** -0.006
are males, married, manual negative effect on our way of life (0.009) (0.009)
employee, Catholic, single in the next 20 years
person household, never or Constant 3.511*** 3.504*** 3.569***
almost never unable to pay a bill (0.053) (0.056) (0.057)
at the end of a month. Robust
Observations 33,321 31,546 30,906
standard errors in parentheses
***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1 R-squared 0.242 0.235 0.238

11
There were two additional statements that people were asked to give views on: “Science and technol-
ogy make our lives easier, healthier and more comfortable” and “Science and technology make our lives
healthier”, but these had very poor response rates resulted in 20,000 observations being lost in both cases. As
a result we excluded information from the these responses. The responses to 4 of the 8 questions used were
negatively framed. We recoded these so they were positively framed.

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Artificial Intelligence Perceptions and Life Satisfaction Page 11 of 14 5

Fig. 1 Estimated coefficient of relative AI and automation on life satisfaction

and confidence intervals are presented in Fig. 1. This illustrates that there is little discernible
country-specific effect.

4.1 Limitations

We are unable to formally test whether people’s views about AI and automation cause life
satisfaction to decline. For this, instruments for predicting people’s views on such tech-
nologies are necessary which do not directly correlate with life satisfaction. Measures of
regional or postcode level accessibility to broader technologies (e.g. internet, broadband
speed), levels of e-participation and of spending on software by businesses and households
may be a starting point here.
A second issue is that while we are implicitly arguing that views on AI and automa-
tion with respect to future employment and way of life are correlated with life satisfaction
through fear, we do not control for fear. Fear is known as a basic emotion in psychology.
Through an evolutionary lens, fear can trigger humans to feel threatened. Some people will
have more triggers for being threatened than others, meaning in our model we could be
capturing people’s general fear rather than a specific fear of AI and automation. It is also
possible that some people are technophobes or technophiles and that our findings are in part
capturing these elements as well.
Thirdly we cannot consider whether people have been directly impacted by automation
in their lives. Research indicates that people in jobs that are more exposed to automation
may suffer a decline in aspects of their mental health (Robelski & Wischniewski, 2018;
Körner et al., 2019; Szalma & Taylor, 2011) but that automation may also improve lives by
reducing the monotonous tasks people undertake (Gorny and Woodard, 2020).

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5 Page 12 of 14 T. Hinks

5 Conclusion and Future Research

This paper analyses the views people have about AI and automation through the lens of life
satisfaction. We find robust evidence to support the view that people who hold negative
views towards these technologies report lower life satisfaction. When we consider general
fear of new technologies this impacts our results but people who view AI and automation as
having an overall negative effect on jobs still report lower life satisfaction. Whilst previous
research has focussed on the impact computers and robots have on job and life satisfaction
this is the first part to highlight a negative relationship between AI and life satisfaction.
This finding confirms a wildly held view that citizens in Europe are concerned about the
impact AI and other forms of automation will have on future employment chances. These
concerns may well be based on personal experiences or observations of what is happening
in local and national labour markets and across labour markets more widely. For this reason
there is a need for much greater public debate about what automation and AI will mean for
future employment and opportunities in order to allay the apparent fears of this new tech-
nology. This cannot simply involve discussion between Big-Tech firms and government but
requires the participation of other parties to better understand what these technologies will
mean for the quality and the quantity of jobs that will likely be both destroyed and created.

5.1 Future Research

The paper calls for more research into how new technologies are being accommodated into
firms, whether this integration is a collaborative process with current employees, what cur-
rent employees feel about these new technologies and whether there is evidence that pro-
ductivity increases associated with these technologies has meant anything for employee pay.
This research will feed into the wider question as to what exposure to increased automation
means for worker wellbeing and for overall wellbeing. A more systematic approach is also
needed to test whether general fear, fear towards new technologies and fear differences
between new technologies that someone is exposed to, are all associated with lower life sat-
isfaction. An initial small sample study by Khasawneh (2018) finds 16 factors that comprise
an overall fear of technology, while Nimrod (2018) follows a similar method to find that
techno-stress amongst older people results in lower reported life satisfaction. Arguably such
research should be used in cross-country surveys to help better capture whether specific
technologies are associated with greater fear, stress and anxiety than others.12

Acknowledgements Not applicable.

Funding Not applicable.

Declarations

Conflict of Interest The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of
this article.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,

12
Cugurullo and Acheampong (2023) have begun to address this question with regard to people’s fears of
autonomous cars.

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Artificial Intelligence Perceptions and Life Satisfaction Page 13 of 14 5

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