National happiness levels are often attributed to domestic environmental and socioeconomic conditions or policies, yet how one country's pursuit of happiness affects others through global trade remains underexplored. This study adopts a global justice lens to examine negative spillover effects—harmful environmental and social impacts that countries impose on others via transnational supply chains and production networks. Using cross-sectional global data for 2019 and 2024, the analyses reveal a growing concentration of spillovers, particularly from advanced economies toward more developing ones. The findings show that higher national happiness scores are frequently accompanied by greater negative spillovers, which also indirectly reduce other countries' happiness by amplifying air pollution (PM2.5). This pattern reflects a global trend of “exploitative happiness” rather than “sustainable happiness.” The study highlights the limitations of current governance mechanisms in managing cross-border supply chains and calls for transparent data sharing, robust transnational regulatory frameworks, and transformative shifts in public awareness and degrowth-oriented lifestyles to achieve forms of happiness that do not exploit other people or the environment.
Policy implications
- National well-being strategies should incorporate spillover metrics alongside happiness indicators, set targets to lower negative spillovers per unit of happiness or GDP, track air-quality co-benefits, and publish annual progress; ministries and firms that demonstrably reduce externalized harms while maintaining or improving well-being should be rewarded.
- Governments and mainstream media should champion the societal benefits of degrowth and promote simpler, lower impact lifestyles by making sustainable choices visible and compelling. To enable this, they should create and maintain real-time, transparent, user-friendly platforms, such as mobile apps and open-access databases, that disclose the cross-border environmental and social spillovers embedded in production and consumption, thereby strengthening consumer awareness and shifting demand.
- Policymakers should reduce high-impact consumption through targeted demand-side measures, such as eco-taxes and feebates, limits on advertising for resource-intensive goods, and support for repair, reuse, and public transit, while piloting shorter workweeks and neighborhood amenities that shift well-being toward eudaimonic outcomes rather than material throughput.
- Governments should mandate standardized disclosure of cross-border “embedded” impacts in trade, including air pollution, deforestation, fatal workplace accidents, and hazardous waste, and require product-level labeling and open data portals so regulators, buyers, and consumers can see upstream harms.
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