Subjective well-being measurement based on Chinese grassroots blog text sentiment analysis

In this study, we propose a new method to measure the subjective well-being (SWB) of Chinese people. Based upon the classic framework in psychology, our model constructs a system of multiple weighted emotions in positive and negative affect by applying a text-sentiment analysis. To study SWB in the Chinese context, we also establish and supplement our model with a new lexicon, Ren-CECps-SWB 2.0. Tests on the data of 7 years of grassroots blogs on Sina.com demonstrate the validity of our model. Employing the same data, we find interesting patterns of the SWB of Chinese people on weekly and monthly bases.