Books

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-04443-3
authored by M. Joseph Sirgy, Virginia Tech, Dong-Jin Lee, Yonsei University and published by Springer

This book provides a systematic review and analysis of the literature on product-related, situational, organizational, and cultural factors influencing people’s happiness in the marketplace. The authors, senior experts in the field, make specific recommendations to design and implement consumer wellbeing strategies. These recommendations are for marketing executives to maximize their effectiveness and help consumers achieve optimal levels of happiness (overall happiness, consumer happiness, and consumption happiness), which in turn could enhance organizational return on investment through customer loyalty, repeat patronage, sales, and profit. The book reviews and integrates learnings from the research on happiness in several fields of study, namely, quality-of-life studies, marketing, consumer studies, social psychology, and behavioral economics, and is of interest to marketing executives and academics from various fields working on consumers and consumer wellbeing.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-56314-0
authored by M. Joseph Sirgy, Virginia Tech, Dong-Jin Lee, Yonsei University and published by Springer

This book provides a systematic review of the research literature related to the effectiveness of organizational policies and programs on work-life balance (WLB). It discusses policies and practices related to workload management, flextime, flexplace, alternative job arrangements, and family care. Based on the evidence, the authors make specific recommendations to organizational executives and HR directors to design and implement work-life balance policies and programs to maximize their effectiveness and help employees achieve their optimal level of work-life balance. Specifically, the authors discuss how to: (1) identify employees with greater need for WLB programs, (2) evaluate environmental circumstances for WLB programs (3) design effective WLB policies and programs, (3) facilitate effective implementation of WLB policies and programs, (4) provide management support for WLB policies and programs, and (5) evaluate performance of WLB policies and programs. Written lucidly by experts in the field and with many case studies and examples, this book appeals to a wide range of academic and professional readers.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/9783031315121
edited by Muzaffer Uysal and M. Joseph Sirgy

The second volume of this handbook develops on and extends the discussion in the successful first volume, published in 2012. This is a timely addition to the literature, drawing on the momentum that quality of life (QOL) research in tourism has gained in the 21st century and on the boom in the tourism industry itself. It focuses on four areas of growth in QOL research in the recent past: (1) travelers/tourists, (2) host communities, (3) service providers, and (4) the role of technology. The handbook helps management of tourism firms and policy makers develop specific policies and programs to ensure the most positive impact of tourism on tourists, host communities, and service providers. The comprehensive coverage of topics in this handbook makes it a state-of-the-art reference. Academics interested in QOL research in travel and tourism, tourism practitioners interested in applying the science of QOL in the tourism industry, as well as policy makers involved in regulating the industry will view the handbook as indispensable source of recent research.

Website: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/worklife-balance/676D48EDDE082A5CA73A9BEFF954CB46
authored by M. Joseph Sirgy, Virginia Tech, Dong-Jin Lee, Yonsei University and published by Cambridge University Press

Based on a thorough review of the research on work-life balance, Sirgy and Lee identify a set of personal interventions that selected employees commonly use to increase their work-life balance and life satisfaction. Personal interventions of work-life balance involve five behavior-based strategies and four cognition-based strategies. The behavior-based strategies are engaging in multiple roles and domains, increasing role enrichment, engaging in behavior-based compensation, managing role conflict, and creating role balance. The cognition-based strategies are segmenting roles and domains, integrating roles and domains, engaging in value-based compensation, and applying whole-life perspective in decision-making. This volume provides HR managers and HR consultants with pedagogical material designed to help them develop in-house workshops, seminars, and curricula for their employees to improve their work-life balance by using the personal interventions described in the book.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-98152-5
edited by Clifford J. Shultz, II0, Don R. Rahtz, and M. Joseph Sirgy

This volume explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health, safety, and socioeconomic well-being of community residents of selected countries around the world. It is built on an overarching framework of studying community well-being, applied here to the analyses of one of the most significant crises of our time. Most important are the lessons learned from the experiences in these countries – including insights and recommendations on how to mitigate future pandemics. Building on years of research, each chapter is written by an accomplished scholar with interests and expertise on various assessments of community well-being development in the country of study. The authors share cases and analyses, and highlight failures and successes; they offer sound policy recommendations on how to restore the health, safety, and multidimensional wellness of community residents, and how to decrease the likelihood and impact of future crises. Some of the policy recommendations in this multi-country compendium can be used to assist crisis prevention and recovery, beyond pandemics. The volume shows how the lessons learned and shared from community responses to the pandemic can provide critical and useful policy insights to shape best practices in mitigating other disasters like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, wars, riots, acts of domestic and international terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and industrial accidents. This is a must-read for researchers across the social sciences, health sciences, and management studies, and for government and non-government professionals involved in community health and well-being.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-10208-0
authored by M. Joseph Sirgy

This training book is designed to help professionals enhance their knowledge of community quality-of-life indicators, and to develop viable community projects. Chapter 1 describes the theoretical concepts that guide the formulation of community indicator projects. Chapter 2 creates a sample community indicator project as a template of the entire process. Chapter 3 describes the planning process: how to identify sponsors, secure funding, develop an organizational structure, select a quality-of-life model, select indicators, and so on. Chapter 4 focuses on data collection. Finally, Chapter 5 describes efforts related to dissemination and promotion of community indicators projects. Written by a stalwart in the field of quality-of-life research, this book provides the tools of sound community project planning for quality-of-life researchers, social workers, social marketers, community research organizations, and policy-makers.

Website: https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/psychology/health-and-clinical-psychology/balanced-life-using-strategies-behavioral-science-enhance-wellbeing
authored by M. Joseph Sirgy

The balanced life is a state of equally moderate-to-high levels of satisfaction in important and multiple life domains that contribute to overall life satisfaction. This book strives to improve the reader's understanding of what the balanced life is, and how it can be both achieved and maintained. Its primary goal is therefore to identify the major principles of life balance, and to introduce a comprehensive construct of the balanced life reflective of these principles. It discusses how life balance substantially contributes to subjective well-being – defined as life satisfaction, a preponderance of positive over negative feelings, and absence of ill-being – and explores strategies to attain life balance. It argues that achieving life balance, through manipulating one's thoughts and taking concrete action, will lead to increased personal happiness. Aimed at professional, academic, and lay audiences, this book is grounded in scientific studies related to work-life balance and the balanced life.

Website: https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Quality-Life-Well-Being-Satisfaction/dp/9400744048
authored by M. Joseph Sirgy and published by Springer

The third, thoroughly revised and enhanced edition of this bestselling book analyses and discusses the most up-to-date research on the psychology of quality of life. The book is divided into six parts. The introductory part lays the philosophical and academic foundation of much of the research on wellbeing and positive mental health, showing the beneficial effects of happy people at work, health, and to society at large. Part 2 (effects of objective reality) describes how sociocultural factors, income factors, other demographic factors, and biological and health conditions affect wellbeing and positive mental health. Part 3 focuses on subjective reality and discusses how individuals process information from their objective environment, and how they manipulate this information that affects wellbeing and positive mental health. Part 4 focuses on the psychology of quality of life specific to life domains, while Part 5 reviews the research on special populations: children, women, the elderly, but also the disabled, drug addicts, prostitutes, emergency personnel, immigrants, teachers, and caregivers. The final part of the book focuses on theories and models of wellbeing and positive mental health that integrate and unify disparate concepts and programs of research. The book addresses the importance of the psychology of quality of life in the context of public policy and calls for a broadening of the approach in happiness research to incorporate other aspects of quality of life at the group, community, and societal levels. It is of topical interest to academics, students and researchers of quality of life, well-being research, happiness studies, psychotherapy, and social policy.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-40289-1
authored by M. Joseph Sirgy and published by Springer

The book provides a new theory of well-being designed to integrate many disparate concepts of well-being, such as subjective well-being, personal happiness, mental well-being, emotional well-being, psychological well-being, hedonic well-being, social well-being, life satisfaction, domain satisfaction, and eudaimonia. It lays the foundation for a new a theory of mental well-being based on a hierarchical perspective of positive mental health and guided by the concept of positive balance.

Written by a well-known expert in the field, this book addresses the issue of positive balance related to physiological, emotional, cognitive, meta-cognitive, developmental and social-ecological levels of an individual and analyses the factors at each level that contribute to an individual’s positive mental health experience. It discusses in detail the effects of neurochemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, or cortisol; positive and negative affect; satisfaction in salient and multiple life domains vis-à-vis dissatisfaction in life domains; positive versus negative evaluations about one’s life using certain standards of comparison; positive psychological traits of personal growth and intrinsic motivation, etc. vis-à-vis negative traits like pessimism and impulsiveness; and perceived social resources like social contribution and social actualization vis-à-vis perceived constraints like exclusion and ostracism.

This book focuses on the drivers of Jihadist terrorism and explains how a better understanding of these drivers can lead to more effective counterterrorism policies all over the world. It builds on results of the extensive body of quality of life studies to document the historical, geo-political, economic, religious, cultural and media drivers of Jihadist terrorism. Guided by a major theme this book shows that the significant gains we have made in combatting Jihadist terrorism are not enough, but that we need to embrace a much broader and comprehensive view of the antecedents and the sustaining enablers of this threat to help guide any sustainable efforts. It proposes interventions designed to effectively treat the causes of this insidious disease. This book is of great interest to new media, policy makers concerned about national security as well as people and academic scholars whose research interest involves conflict and conflict resolution, religious studies, terrorism and counterterrorism, Islamic history, and Islamic geo-politics.

Click here to download the entire report.

Website: https://www.miqols.org/aiwb/
authored by Richard J. Estes and M. Joseph Sirgy and published by Rowman & Littlefield International Publishers in London

Media and research tend to focus on social problems in today's world from terrorism and natural disasters to environmental degradation, conflict, and economic decline. Yet many countries are also placing the promotion of well-being at the heart of their social agenda. So what can we say about human progress and the development of civilization? This book considers the brighter side of our world today by exploring the ways in which well-being is on an upward swing globally.

Systematically considering indicators of human well-being in terms of economics, health, and education, alongside subjective notions of well-being, the book draws together research and data from around the world. It uses the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index as an underlying framework from which to examine the ways in which well-being has improved since WWII. Analyzing leading scholarship and empirical work allows the authors to determine policy recommendations for how we might continue to build a better world of human well-being.

Website: https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/book/10.1079/9781786390455.0000
authored by M. Uysal, M. J. Sirgy, and S. Kruger

Quality-of-life research in tourism and hospitality has gained much momentum in the past two decades. This line of research covers three main areas of focus: (i) the impacts of specific tourism and hospitality programmes on the overall quality of life of tourists/guests; (ii) the providers of goods and services; (iii) tourist communities, including the impact of different programmes and events on the quality of life of residents in these communities.

Focusing on these key subjects, Managing Quality of Life in Tourism and Hospitality provides a portfolio of selected cases showing best practice and delivering them to the forefront of knowledge application, with examples in tourism and hospitality settings. Best practice case studies are included throughout, providing practical implications and lessons learned. These lessons can be applied by tourism and hospitality practitioners and community leaders, and be used to further research by academics working within tourism and hospitality.

The book offers an exciting and refreshing approach to quality-of-life research in tourism and hospitality.

Key features include:

• Best practice and evidence-based case studies.
• Broad coverage that includes tourists, industry and local communities.
• International application, with material from various countries across the world.

Website: https://www.miqols.org/howb/
edited by Richard J. Estes and M. Joseph Sirgy

This handbook informs the reader about how much progress we, the human race, have made in enhancing the quality of life on this planet. Many skeptics focus on how the quality of life has deteriorated over the course of human history, particularly given World War II and its aftermath. This handbook provides a positive perspective on the history of well-being. Quality of life, as documented by scientists worldwide, has significantly improved. Nevertheless, one sees more improvements in well-being in some regions of the world than in others. Why? This handbook documents the progress of well-being in the various world regions as well as the differences in those regions. The broad questions that the handbook addresses include:

• What does well-being mean?
• How do different philosophical and religious traditions interpret the concept of well-being within their own context
• Has well-being remained the same over different historical epochs and for different regions and subregions of the world?
• In which areas of human development have we been most successful in advancing individual and collective well-being? In which sectors has the attainment of well-being proven most difficult?
• How does well-being differ within and between different populations groups that, for a variety of socially created reasons, have been the most disadvantaged (e.g., children, the aged, women, the poor, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities)?

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-007-6501-6
edited by M. Joseph Sirgy, Rhonda Phillips, and Don R. Rahtz and published by Springer International Publishers in Dordrecht, Netherlands

This book is the sixth in a series covering bet practices in community quality-of-life (QOL) indicators. The cases in this volume describe communities that have launched their own community indicators programs. Elements that are included in the descriptions are the history of the community indicators work within the target region, the planning of community indicators, the actual indicators that were selected, the data collection process, the reporting of the results, and the use of the indicators to guide community development decisions and public policy.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-007-4059-4
edited by Nora P. Reilly, M. Joseph Sirgy, and C. Allen Gorman and published by Springer International Publishers in Dordrecht, Netherlands

Employees have personal responsibilities as well as responsibilities to their employers. They also have rights. In order to maintain their well-being, employees need opportunities to resolve conflicting obligations. Employees are often torn between the ethical obligations to fulfill both their work and non-work roles, to respect and be respected by their employers and coworkers, to be responsible to the organization while the organization is reciprocally responsible to them, to be afforded some degree of autonomy at work while attending to collaborative goals, to work within a climate of mutual employee-management trust, and to voice opinions about work policies, processes and conditions without fear of retribution. Humanistic organizations can recognize conflicts created by the work environment and provide opportunities to resolve or minimize them.

This handbook empirically documents the dilemmas that result from responsibility-based conflicts. The book is organized by sources of dilemmas that fall into three major categories: individual, organizational (internal policies and procedures), and cultural (social forces external to the organization), including an introduction and a final integration of the many ways in which organizations can contribute to positive employee health and well-being.

This book is aimed at both academicians and practitioners who are interested in how interventions that stem from industrial and organizational psychology may address ethical dilemmas commonly faced by employees.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-007-2288-0
edited by Muzaffer Uysal, Richard R. Perdue, and M. Joseph Sirgy and published by Springer International Publishers in Dordrecht, Netherlands

Quality of life (QOL) research in tourism has gained much momentum over the last two decades. Academics working in this area research issues related to tourists and host communities. Practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in understanding the science that allows them to develop better marketing and managerial programs designed to enhance the quality of life of tourists. Tourism bureaus and government agencies are increasingly interested in issues of sustainable tourism, specifically in understanding and measuring the impact of tourism on the quality of life of the residents of the host communities. This handbook covers all relevant topics and is divided into two parts: research relating to travelers/tourists, and research relating to the residents of host communities. It is the only state-of-the-art reference book in its field and will prove invaluable to academics interested in QOL research, as well as tourism practitioners interested in applying the science of QOL in the tourism industry.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-007-2421-1
edited by Kenneth C. Land, Alex C. Michalos, and M. Joseph Sirgy and published by Springer International Publishers in Dordrecht, Netherlands

The aim of the Handbook of Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research is to create an overview of the field of Quality of Life (QOL) studies in the early years of the 21st century that can be updated and improved upon as the field evolves and the century unfolds.

Social indicators are statistical time series “…used to monitor the social system, helping to identify changes and to guide intervention to alter the course of social change”. Examples include unemployment rates, crime rates, estimates of life expectancy, health status indices, school enrollment rates, average achievement scores, election voting rates, and measures of subjective well-being such as satisfaction with life-as-a-whole and with specific domains or aspects of life.

This book provides a review of the historical development of the field including the history of QOL in medicine and mental health as well as the research related to quality-of-work-life (QWL) programs. It discusses several of QOL main concepts: happiness, positive psychology, and subjective wellbeing. Relations between spirituality and religiousness and QOL are examined as are the effects of educational attainment on QOL and marketing, and the associations with economic growth. The book goes on to investigate methodological approaches and issues that should be considered in measuring and analysing quality of life from a quantitative perspective. The final chapters are dedicated to research on elements of QOL in a broad range of countries and populations.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-007-0535-7
edited by M. Joseph Sirgy, Rhonda Phillips, and Don R. Rahtz and published by Springer International Publishers in Dordrecht, Netherlands

This book contains "best practices" of community quality-of-life indicator systems implemented in various communities throughout the world.

The cases in this volume describe communities that have launched their own community indicators programs. Elements that are included in the descriptions are the history of the community indicators work within the target region, the planning of community indicators, the actual indicators that were selected, the data collection process, the reporting of the results, and the use of the indicators to guide community development decisions and public policy.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-90-481-2242-4
edited by M. Joseph Sirgy, Rhonda Phillips, and Don R. Rahtz and published by Springer International Publishers in Dordrecht, Netherlands

This book contains "best practices" of community quality-of-life indicator systems implemented in various communities throughout the world.

The cases in this volume describe communities that have launched their own community indicators programs. Elements that are included in the descriptions are the history of the community indicators work within the target region, the planning of community indicators, the actual indicators that were selected, the data collection process, the reporting of the results, and the use of the indicators to guide community development decisions and public policy.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-90-481-2257-8
edited by M. Joseph Sirgy, Rhonda Phillips, and Don R. Rahtz and published by Springer International Publishers in Dordrecht, Netherlands

This book contains "best practices" of community quality-of-life indicator systems implemented in various communities throughout the world.

The cases in this volume describe communities that have launched their own community indicators programs. Elements that are included in the descriptions are the history of the community indicators work within the target region, the planning of community indicators, the actual indicators that were selected, the data collection process, the reporting of the results, and the use of the indicators to guide community development decisions and public policy.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4020-4625-4
edited by M. Joseph Sirgy , Don Rahtz1, and David Swain

This book is the second in a series covering best practices in community quality-of-life (QOL) indicators. The first was published in 2004. The editors are M. Joseph Sirgy, Don Rahtz and Dong-Jin Lee. Volume 1 is a compilation of cases of best work in community indicators research. The cases describe communities that have launched their own community indicators programs. Elements that are included in the descr- tions are the history of the community indicators work within the target region, the planning of community indicators, the actual indicators that were selected, the data collection process, the reporting of the results and the use of the indicators to guide community development decisions and public policy.

Website: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10054696-community-quality-of-life-indicators
edited by M. Joseph Sirgy, Don Rahtz, and Dong-Jin Lee

This book is a compilation of cases of best work in community indicators research. The cases describe communities that have launched their own community indicators programs. Elements that are included in the descriptions are the history of the community indicators work within the target region, the planning of community indicators, the actual indicators that were selected, the data collection process, the reporting of the results, and the use of the indicators to guide community development decisions and public policy.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-017-0387-1
edited by M. Joseph Sirgy, Don Rahtz, and A. Coskun Samli

Advances in Quality-of-Life Theory and Research is relevant to quality-of-life researchers working in the areas of Social Medicine, Sustainable Development, Social Indicators Research and Health Psychology/Behavioral Medicine. This volume contains 14 chapters that represent a culmination of programmatic research in the science of quality of life (QOL). Each chapter offers interesting findings in different areas of QOL research and, together, the chapters reflect the very basic premise that QOL research is a broad interdisciplinary topic explored in a multidisciplinary manner. The research methods and conceptual models used by the different authors are exemplary and can induce QOL researchers to conduct future research in QOL in other cultures, geographic areas, and different socio-economic and demographic groups as well as in different QOL domains.

Website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-015-9837-8
authored by M. Joseph Sirgy

This handbook provides students of quality-of-life (QOL) research with an understanding of how QOL research can be conducted from an ethical marketing perspective - a perspective based on positive social change. The handbook covers theoretical, philosophical, and measurement issues in QOL research. The handbook also approaches selected QOL studies in relation to various populations in various life domains. The marketing approach is highly pragmatic because it allows social and behavioral scientists from any discipline to apply marketing concepts to plan social change and assess the impact of intervention strategies on the QOL of targeted populations.

Website: https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Quality-Social-Indicators-Research-ebook/dp/B000PY3TB8/ref=sr_1_2
authored by M. Joseph Sirgy

This book summarizes much of the research in subjective well-being and integrates this research into a parsimonious theory. The theory posits that much of the research on subjective well-being can be construed in terms of the personal strategies that people use to `optimize' their happiness and life satisfaction. These strategies include bottom-up spillover, top-down spillover, horizontal spillover, balance, re-evaluation, goal selection, and goal implementation.

Website: https://www.amazon.com/Dimensions-Marketing-Quality-Life-Research/dp/0899308864/ref=sr_1_1
authored by A. Coskun Samli and M. Joseph Sirgy

A collection of carefully edited papers selected for their range and diversity of topics, New Dimensions in Marketing/Quality-of-Life Research picks up where Samli's first Quorum book (1987) left off. Now Sirgy and Samli along with their contributors explore the latest measures and methods in QOL marketing research, the ways in which QOL concept is embodied in various functional areas of the marketing enterprise, and how it's appearing in different market segments and industries. The result is a cogent overview of how this emerging marketing concept is guiding the way goods and services are sold, and its impact on policy-makers. A wide-ranging discussion and information resource for teachers, students, and marketing practitioners.