Impact of filial piety on residents’ subjective well-being in China considering the moderating effect of income level

Abstract

Subjective well-being (SWB) reflects an individual’s subjective evaluation of overall life satisfaction and healthcare situation. As one of the most important concepts in traditional Chinese culture, filial piety refers to an ancient and significant ethical concept that originates from traditional Chinese culture. Filial piety emphasizes the respect, care, and filial devotion of children towards their parents, and has a complex influence on SWB. Moreover, in the context of rapid economic development, an individual’s income level significantly moderates the influence of filial piety. Revealing the influence of different types of filial piety on SWB is of great significance for enhancing residents’ SWB. However, existing studies rarely touch upon this topic. Therefore, this paper focuses on the 7 kinds of filial piety, establishes an ordered logit model based on the data from the China General Social Survey, and analyzes the influence of these 7 kinds of filial piety on SWB. On this basis, this study analyzes the moderating effect of income level. Finally, it further analyzes the regional heterogeneity of China in the influence of filial piety. Concepts such as constant respect for father’s authority, enhancing parents’ honor, and bearing sons for the purpose of lineage continuity, have negative impact on SWB. Superior economic conditions can neutralize and salvage these concepts to a certain extent, but they are ultimately negative. In regions with a minority population such as the 4 northeastern provinces, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia, and Xinjiang, these concepts can increase SWB, which is restricted by the local economic level and might just be a transitional form of insufficient development. appreciating the kindness of upbringing; treating parents well under any circumstances; giving up personal ambitions to fulfill parents’ wishes, positively influence individual SWB, especially when income is substantial. The research results indicate that different type of filial piety has different impacts on SWB; income level has a significant moderating effect; and there are significant regional heterogeneities in the influence of filial piety. The results of this study provide a theoretical basis and reference for enhancing residents’ SWB.

1. Introduction

Well-being refers to the state of being happy, healthy, and prosperous.^[1] It encompasses various aspects of an individual’s life, including physical, mental, and emotional state.^[2] Well-being is not merely the absence of illness or distress, but rather a state of overall satisfaction and fulfillment in different areas of life. Subjective well-being (SWB) is an individual’s overall assessment of their quality of life-based on their own standards.^[3] SWB is an important basis for individual behavior, and even more, it is an important reference standard for the formation of social value orientation and sustainable national development.^[4] With the high-speed economic development of China, uncovering the factors that impact the residents’ SWB is of great significance for enhancing residents’ live quality.

The filial piety, which has been formed in China for a long time, has a significant impact on residents’ SWB.^[5–7] Since Confucius established the connotation of filial piety as “serving parents well,” filial piety has been promoted by the ruling class, demonstrated by the intellectual class, and practiced by the general public in the long traditional society.^[8] In the modern China, most of studies focus on how filial piety should be adapted to the status and value concepts of modern people. For example, Zheng believed that traditional filial piety should be repositioned, besides advocating virtues such as respecting the elderly and loving the young, respecting teachers and valuing virtue, loving orphans and the weak, and friendly relations with brothers and friends, and it is necessary to eliminate blind obedience, authoritarian consciousness, and machismo, especially the concept of blind loyalty derived from it.^[9] Yuan analyzed relationship between intergenerational co-residence and the SWB of elders based on the individual-level panel data collected from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey from 2002 to 2014.^[6] Guo et al^[7] uncovered the relationship of filial piety to the academic achievement or life satisfaction of Chinese adolescents. If we only discuss how to adapt traditional ethics to modern life, the value of filial piety will only be retained at a negative level.^[10] The significance of filial piety for modern Chinese people goes far beyond this. With the realization of the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, people’s spiritual life, especially the emotional life based on relationship ethics, is becoming increasingly important.^[11] For individuals, family interpersonal relationships, different from work and general social relationships, not only represent an indispensable starting point for life but also provide a foundation for the latter 2.

Moreover, with the deepening of the economy, social relationships, whether in terms of frequency of communication or the impact on individual real interests, are more burdensome than family interpersonal relationships.^[12] However, individual frustrations and traumas at the social interpersonal level still need emotional consolation from family relationships, and these relationships serve as a source of motivation for perseverance and progress.^[13] Simultaneously, under the adjustment of filial piety ethics, the income level (IL) of family members has also become more balanced. An individual’s SWB is inevitably closely related to economic income.^[14] The social reality of an aging population forces children to consider the difficulty of materially supporting their elderly parents. Hence, the tension between children’s self-interest and the elderly’s familial joy is particularly intense in modern society of China.

Existing studies has explored the impact of ILs on residents’ SWB.^[15–17] However, no study has yet paid attention to the impact of filial piety, which significantly influences Chinese family relationships, on SWB. In addition, the moderating role of IL in the influence of the filial piety on SWB is also uncovered. Therefore, this paper will use data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) and the ordered logit model to analyze the influence of the filial piety on SWB and the moderating role of IL on this influence. On this basis, it will further analyze the heterogeneities in the impact of the concept of filial piety in different regions of China.

2. Method

2.1. Data source

The data adopted in this paper mainly includes 4 parts: data related to the filial piety concept, data related to IL, data related to residents’ SWB, and data related to control variables. By comparing the valid data, coverage, and other information in various public databases in the existing literature, this paper finally determines that the data released by the large-scale social survey project “Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS)” hosted by the China Survey and Data Center of Renmin University of China will be used as the basic data.^[18,19] CGSS is China’s first national, comprehensive, and continuous large-scale social survey project, covering data from various aspects of the economy and society.^[20] This paper selects CGSS-2017 data for research, and after preliminary screening, the valid sample size is 1092 valid samples. The main reason for the smaller number of valid samples is that there are many types of filial piety concepts, and many samples have missing values.

In addition, all above-mentioned data are publicly accessible, and the use of the data complies with regulations.

2.2. Variable description

1. SWB. The dependent variable in this paper is SWB. SWB is an individual’s overall evaluation of their current life status, their enduring satisfaction and immense joy about the environment, events, and people they are in, and the desire for this pleasant mood to continue forever. Therefore, this paper is determined according to “Do you feel your life is happy?” in the CGSS-2017 database.

2. Filial Piety concept. Seven types of filial piety concepts are listed in CGSS-2017, which are: Constant respect for father’s authority (FP1); enhancing parents’ honor (FP2); bearing sons for the purpose of lineage continuity (FP3); appreciating the kindness of upbringing (FP4); treating parents well under any circumstances (FP5); giving up personal ambitions to fulfill parents’ wishes (FP6); and doing their best to support parents (FP7).

3. IL. This paper uses the family’s economic situation to depict the IL.

4. Control variables. This paper selects several indicators to control personal factors, mainly including gender, religious beliefs, education level, and political affiliation.

The definition and statistical results of each indicator are shown in Table 1. Preliminary statistical analysis shows that the mean value of SWB is 2.7371, which is close to relatively happy, indicating that the residents surveyed have a high sense of happiness. Among the concepts of filial piety, the 7 concepts can be roughly divided into 2 categories by the mean value: the first category has a relatively low mean value (<3, including Constant respect for father’s authority, enhancing parents’ honor, bearing sons for the purpose of lineage continuity, and giving up personal ambitions to fulfill parents’ wishes), and the second category has a relatively high mean value (>3, including appreciating the kindness of upbringing, treating parents well under any circumstances, and doing their best to support parents). This indicates that there are clear differences in the attitudes of individuals in society towards different concepts of filial piety concept, which also implies that different concepts of filial piety have different impacts on SWB. In contemporary society, the standards for measuring people tend to be the political, economic, or cultural status an individual obtains. Coupled with long-time work model, people can’t and don’t need to sacrifice their ambitions and possible achievements for the wishes of the older generation. Filial piety toward parents has more equal colors and so-called support for the elderly is more manifested in mutual respect and love in the sense of personal independence. Therefore, the statistics in Table 1 conform to the actual changes in family ethics.^[21]

Table 1.

Representation and statistical information of each variable.

Variable	Measure	Mean	Standard deviation	Minimum value	Maximum value
SWB	Do you feel your life is happy: very unhappy = 0; rather unhappy = 1; neither happy nor unhappy = 2; quite happy = 3; very happy = 4	2.734	1.232	0	4.000
FP1	Strongly disagree = 0; somewhat disagree = 1; slightly disagree = 2; neutral or undecided = 3; slightly agree = 4; somewhat agree = 5; strongly agree = 6	2.666	1.341	0	6.000
FP2	Strongly disagree = 0; somewhat disagree = 1; slightly disagree = 2; neutral or undecided = 3; slightly agree = 4; somewhat agree = 5; strongly agree = 6	2.4060	1.1728	0	6.000
FP3	Strongly disagree = 0; somewhat disagree = 1; slightly disagree = 2; neutral or undecided = 3; slightly agree = 4; somewhat agree = 5; strongly agree = 6.	1.8312	1.6921	0	6.000
FP4	Strongly disagree = 0; somewhat disagree = 1; slightly disagree = 2; neutral or undecided = 3; slightly agree = 4; somewhat agree = 5; strongly agree = 6	4.411	0.798	0	6.000
FP5	Strongly disagree = 0; somewhat disagree = 1; slightly disagree = 2; neutral or undecided = 3; slightly agree = 4; somewhat agree = 5; strongly agree = 6	4.923	1.092	0	6.000
FP6	Strongly disagree = 0; somewhat disagree = 1; slightly disagree = 2; neutral or undecided = 3; slightly agree = 4; somewhat agree = 5; strongly agree = 6.	1.257	1.471	0	6.000
FP7	Strongly disagree = 0; somewhat disagree = 1; slightly disagree = 2; neutral or undecided = 3; slightly agree = 4; somewhat agree = 5; strongly agree = 6	4.798	0.936	0	6.000
IL	Your own socioeconomic status is: lower class = 0; lower middle class = 1; middle class = 2; upper middle class = 3; upper class = 4.	2.605	0.724	0	4.000
Gender	Male = 1; female = 0	1.251	0.402	0	2.000
Religious beliefs	Do you have a religious belief: no = 0; yes = 1	0.881	0.322	0	1.000
Education level	No formal education = 0; private tutoring or literacy class = 1; elementary school = 2; junior high school = 3; vocational high school = 4; regular high school = 5; technical school = 6; vocational school = 7; college (adult education) = 8; college (regular education) = 9; bachelor’s degree (adult education) = 10; bachelor’s degree (regular education) = 11; postgraduate and above = 12	4.571	4.271	0	12.000
Political affiliation	Current political affiliation: party = 1; non-party = 0	0.2456	0.53	0	1.000

FP1 = constant respect for father's authority, FP2 = enhancing parents' honor, FP3 = bearing sons for the purpose of lineage continuity, FP4 = appreciating the kindness of upbringing, FP5 = treating parents well under any circumstances, FP6 = giving up personal ambitions to fulfill parents' wishes, FP7 = and doing their best to support parents, IL = income level, SWB = subjective well-being.

2.3. Analytical model

The subject of this study is residents’ SWB. Empirical data show that the dependent variable is a discrete variable and there is a clear ordinal relationship between the options. Based on the results of existing literature,^[10,20] this paper chooses to apply the widely-used ordered logit model, and constructs the following model to estimate parameters.

$${\displaystyle \begin{array}{l}{\displaystyle \mathrm{S}\mathrm{B}\mathrm{W}={\beta }_0+{\beta }_j\cdot {\psi }_j+\theta X_i+\mu }\end{array}}$$ (1)

In the formula, ${\psi }_j$ represents different types of filial piety concepts, $j=1,2,\cdots ,7$, $X_i$ represents the control variables that have significant impact on SWB, referring to variables such as gender, religious beliefs, educational level, political outlook in this paper. ${\beta }_0$, ${\beta }_j$, $\theta$, $\mu$ are parameters to be solved.

Based on the above model, this paper further considers the moderating effect of IL on the concept of Filial Piety. The analysis framework is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Analysis framework considering the moderating effect of income level. SWB = subjective well-being.

Based on the above framework, the following model is constructed based on the baseline model, as shown in Equation (2)

$${\displaystyle \begin{array}{l}{\displaystyle \mathrm{S}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{B}={\beta }_0+{\beta }_j\cdot {\psi }_j\cdot p+\theta X_i+\mu ,}\end{array}}$$ (2)

where $p$ represents the variable of IL.

3. Empirical research

3.1. The impact of Filial Piety on SWB

Based on the number of independent variables considered in this study, a total of 7 baseline models were constructed. Table 2 shows the regression results of the 7 baseline models. In these baseline models, the influence of filial piety on SWB in models 4, 5, and 7 passed the significance test, indicating that filial piety indeed affects residents’ SWB. At the same time, the estimated coefficients of these 3 models are all positive, implying that filial concepts such as appreciating parental nurturing, treating parents well under all conditions, and doing one’s best to support parents will enhance individual’s SWB. These concepts are the excellent qualities in filial piety, enhancing individuals’ sense of social support, increasing gratitude and responsibility, making individuals cherish and value familial affection more, also allowing individuals to experience the satisfaction and accomplishment of self-realization, thereby improving SWB.^[22,23]

Table 2.

Regression results of baseline models.

Variables	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7
FP1	−0.034* (0.021)
FP2		−0.054* (0.051)
FP3			−0.083** (0.032)
FP4				0.190*** (0.026)
FP5					−0.211*** (0.059)
FP6						0.076 (0.021)
FP7							0.115*** (0.025)
Gender	0.122* (0.118)	0.204* (0.121)	0.160 (0.121)	0.178 (0.131)	0.223 (0.132)	0.217* (0.122)	0.220 (0.126)
Religious beliefs	−0.226 (0.218)	−0.211 (0.213)	−0.254 (0.223)	−0.242 (0.227)	−0.242 (0.219)	−0.224 (0.118)	−0.241 (0.201)
Education level	0.042*** (0.116)	0.042*** (0.022)	0.080** (0.018)	0.081** (0.011)	0.025*** (0.026)	0.041*** (0.053)	0.034** (0.032)
Political affiliation	0.322* (0.765)	0.150* (0.246)	0.127* (0.176)	0.110* (0.084)	0.182* (0.027)	0.127* (0.034)	0.115* (0.099)

FP1 = constant respect for father's authority, FP2 = enhancing parents' honor, FP3 = bearing sons for the purpose of lineage continuity, FP4 = appreciating the kindness of upbringing, FP5 = treating parents well under any circumstances, FP6 = giving up personal ambitions to fulfill parents' wishes, FP7 = and doing their best to support parents.

^***,

^**,

^*represent tests passed at significance levels of 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.

The influence of filial piety on SWB in models 1, 2, and 3 also passed the significance test, but the coefficients are negative. This indicates that filial piety concepts such as constantly respecting father’s authority, enhancing parents’ honor, and bearing sons for the purpose of lineage continuity have a negative impact on SWB. Constant respect for the father’s authority limits children’s life desires and career development directions, affecting children’s freedom and sense of happiness; excessively pursuing the enhancement of parents’ honor may also lead individuals to continuously cater to parents’ expectations and demands in life, thus unable to truly pursue their own happiness and satisfaction; the pursuit of bearing sons to carry on the family lineage is likely to cause tension, anxiety, and depression among family members, reducing individuals’ happiness and quality of life. These 3 types of concepts fully demonstrate the negative aspects of filial piety, which should be properly guided.

Finally, the results of Model 6 are not significant, that is, the impact of sacrificing personal ambitions to fulfill parents’ wishes on individual SWB is not significant.

While controlling for variables such as gender, religious belief, educational level, and political status, the regression coefficient calculation results based on the ordered logit model were used to calculate the marginal effects of the regression results, as shown in Table 3. The marginal effect analysis indicates that when the value of filial piety increases by 1 unit, the individual’s probability of whether they are happy will also change. For example, when the concept of always respecting father’s authority increases by 1 unit, the probabilities that the individual feels very unhappy, relatively unhappy, and neither happy nor unhappy increase by 3.5%, 22.2%, and 1.2%, respectively, while the probabilities of being relatively happy and very happy decrease by 4.9% and 1.6%. These results all indicate that different filial piety concepts have noticeably different impacts on SWB.

Table 3.

Marginal effects of the ordered logit model.

Level	FP1	FP2	FP3	FP4	FP5	FP6	FP7
SWB = 0	0.035*	0.126*	0.004*	−0.114*	−0.041**	−0.025*	−0.007*
SWB = 1	0.222**	0.005*	0.086**	−0.077*	−0.004*	−0.005*	−0.303**
SWB = 2	0.012***	0.010*	0.028*	−0.068**	−0.006**	−0.331*	−0.944*
SWB = 3	−0.049***	−0.215*	−0.991*	0.021***	0.007***	0.096**	0.072***
SWB = 4	−0.016**	−0.073**	−0.217**	0.040***	0. 516***	0.029*	0.030**

SWB = subjective well-being.

^***,

^**,

^*represent tests passed at significance levels of 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.

3.2. The moderating role of IL

Considering the moderating role of IL further within the baseline model, the results are shown in Table 4.

Table 4.

The moderating effect of IL.

Variables	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7
FP1 and IL	−0.007** (0.041)
FP2 and IL		0.017** (0.003)
FP3 and IL			0.089** (0.059)
FP4 and IL				0.871 (0.023)
FP5 and IL					0.022*** (0.093)
FP6 and IL						0.321** (0.090)
FP7 and IL							0.211* (0.564)
Gender	0.109* (0.515)	0.115* (0.167)	0.131* (0.132)	0.187* (0.198)	0.167 (0.120)	0.234* (0.909)	0.436* (0.979)
Religious beliefs	−0.312 (0.250)	−0.101 (0.290)	−0.754 (0.216)	−0.216 (0.219)	−0.554 (0.243)	−0.265 (0.297)	−0.334 (0.298)
Education level	0.026* (0.012)	0.019** (0.217)	0.031** (0.321)	0.012 (0.371)	0.911** (0.034)	0.512 (0.098)	0.787** (0.045)
Political affiliation	0.102* (0.097)	0.122 (0.068)	0.135 (0.067)	0.987 (0.066)	0.034 (0.063)	0.142 (0.069)	0.214* (0.066)

FP1 = constant respect for father's authority, FP2 = enhancing parents' honor, FP3 = bearing sons for the purpose of lineage continuity, FP4 = appreciating the kindness of upbringing, FP5 = treating parents well under any circumstances, FP6 = giving up personal ambitions to fulfill parents' wishes, FP7 = and doing their best to support parents, IL = income level.

^***,

^**,

^*represent tests passed at significance levels of 1%, 5%, and 10%, respectively. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.

Existing research has already demonstrated a positive effect of IL on SWB.^[24] When considering filial piety concepts and IL simultaneously, there are differences in the moderating effect of IL on the impact of filial piety concepts. The significantly negative result from Model 1, coupled with the results from Table 1, indicate that IL has a moderating effect on the impact of the filial piety concept of always respecting father’s authority, but it does not change its negative effect on SWB, the filial piety concept of always respecting father’s authority reduces SWB. The results from Models 2 and 3 are significantly positive and, combined with the results from Table 1, show that the inclusion of IL reverses the effect of filial piety on SWB. These findings highlight the significant influence of IL. The results from Models 5 and 7 are significantly positive, and compared with the results from Table 1, the coefficients significantly increase, indicating that the moderating role of IL is more pronounced.^[25]

3.3. Regional differences

Due to the vastness of our country, different regions are affected by traditional filial piety concepts to varying extents.^[26] Therefore, this study will continue to analyze regional differences in China. The results of the differential analysis are used to examine regional differences in the influence of filial piety concepts on SWB, and, at the same time, the results of the regional analysis are used to verify the robustness and rationality of the results from a nationwide perspective.

In this study, taking into consideration the development level of cities, the country is divided into 4 regions, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Schematic diagram of nationwide regional division.

Using the model established in this study, we analyze the impact of filial piety concepts on SWB in the aforementioned regions and thus analyze the differences among regions. The evaluation results for each region are shown in Table 5.

Table 5.

Results of regional heterogeneity analysis.

Variables	Region 1	Region 1	Region 1	Region 1
FP1	−0.540**	−0.016*	0.345**	−0.185*
FP2	−0.130**	−0.194	0.205**	−0.597**
FP3	−0.056*	0.181*	0.152*	−0.072*
FP4	0.259***	-0.112	0.167	0.048*
FP5	0.125	−0.247**	0.015*	0.114*
FP6	−0.452*	−0.162*	−0.512*	0.180**
FP7	0.792***	−0.443*	0.080*	0.392*

FP1 = constant respect for father's authority, FP2 = enhancing parents' honor, FP3 = bearing sons for the purpose of lineage continuity, FP4 = appreciating the kindness of upbringing, FP5 = treating parents well under any circumstances, FP6 = giving up personal ambitions to fulfill parents' wishes, FP7 = and doing their best to support parents.

^***,

^**,

^*denote significance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% levels, respectively.

From a regional perspective, there are evident differences in the impact of the same filial piety concept. Take the concept of always respecting father’s authority as an example, the coefficients in region 1, region 2, and region 4 are significantly negative, indicating that the main explanatory variables in these regions have a significant negative impact on the dependent variables. The coefficient in region 3 is significantly positive, implying that the main explanatory variable in region 3 has a significant positive impact on the dependent variable. These results demonstrate the existence of differences in the impact of the same filial piety concept across different regions.^[27] An analysis of other results reveals that the impact of other filial piety concepts also varies significantly across regions.

From the perspective of the same region, there are also considerable differences in the impact of different filial piety concepts. Taking region 1 as an example, 3 types of filial piety concepts, namely appreciating the kindness of upbringing, treating parents well under any circumstances, and doing their best to support parents, have a significantly positive impact on an individual’s SWB, while other filial piety concepts have a significantly negative impact. Compared with the results of the benchmark model (Table 2), the concept of sacrificing personal aspirations to fulfill parents’ wishes in region 1 has a negative impact on SWB. Region 1 includes provinces such as Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Fujian, where the degree and length of openness to the outside world is high, leading to rapid renewal of people’s concepts.^[28] The aspirations of the father cannot guarantee satisfaction and pleasure for the offspring. At the same time, the economic development level of these provinces is high. The lifestyle of the traditional agricultural society and the planned economic era has been broken, people have more survival possibilities, and individuals tend to adhere more to their own ideals.^[29]

Overall, with the exception of region 3, the impact trends in each region are basically consistent with the results of the benchmark model (Table 2), which to some extent indicates the stability of the results of this study. Compared with the results of other regions and the benchmark model, the most notable difference in region 3 is that 3 filial piety concepts, namely constant respect for father’s authority, enhancing parental honor, and bearing sons for the purpose of lineage continuity, have a significantly positive impact on SWB. Region 3 mainly includes 7 provinces or autonomous regions, namely the Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province, Guizhou Province, Yunnan Province, Hainan Province, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Many areas in this region are remote areas of our country, where economic and cultural development is relatively backward.^[30] This has not led to opposition to and abandonment of negative concepts in traditional filial piety. Moreover, this region has a large number of ethnic minorities and solidified religious concepts also require believers to have pure lineage, with a strong emphasis on the patriarchal principle. Therefore, the 3 filial piety concepts of constant respect for father’s authority, enhancing parental honor, and bearing sons for the purpose of lineage continuity can actually increase SWB.^[31]

4. Discussion

The filial piety refers to the emphasis in traditional culture on children’s respect, obedience, and care for their parents, a moral standard and ethical rule that people have been expected to observe for a long time.^[32] The concept of filial piety holds an important place in Chinese culture and is seen as the “foundation of the family and the nation,” one of the cores of traditional Chinese moral concepts. It encompasses love, obedience, care, respect, service, protection, and repayment toward parents.^[33] Although filial piety is considered an essential ethical category and moral standard in Chinese traditional culture, some of its concepts carry over the outdated ideas of feudal society, such as “the three unfilial acts, with no offspring being the greatest,” and the sacrifice of an offspring’s independent personality, leading to the suppression of individual freedom and pursuit, increased inequality among family members, and affecting SWB. Therefore, different concepts in filial piety will have a positive or negative impact on SWB.^[34]

With the rapid development of our country’s economy, the self-awareness of Chinese residents is gradually awakening, and they are paying more attention to the satisfaction of their own needs and the realization of their own ideals, which further modulates the impact of filial piety on SWB.^[35] This research not only determines the impact of filial piety on SWB but also further reflects the important regulatory role of economic development on SWB, which is consistent with the research conclusions of existing literature.

Under the grand backdrop of China’s rapid economic development and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, improving the SWB of Chinese residents is of significant importance. As an essential part of traditional morality, how to reasonably position the concept of filial piety in contemporary society is related to the issue of the modern transformation of traditional culture. If modern citizens can find some psychological buffer space or even pleasure in fulfilling filial duties to their parents amidst their busy work, it would be a win-win situation, as it also adds some solace to the lonely lives of the elderly. Family income and regional differences have all moderated to varying degrees the effect of the concept of filial piety on family happiness, and the life factors of modern people appear to be diverse and fragmented.

5. Research conclusions

This study is built on a differential structure of one main, one secondary, and one extended argument. It primarily argues the influence of the concept of filial piety on SWB. The moderating effect of income factors is a secondary argument, and the differences among different regions are an extended argument related to economic factors. The main argument is developed from 7 aspects, which almost cover the core content of traditional filial virtue. Concepts such as constant respect for father’s authority, enhancing parents’ honor and bearing sons for the purpose of lineage continuity, have been shown by significance tests to negatively impact SWB. This indicates that some ethical rules applicable to patriarchal society are gradually being discarded in the modern urban-rural structure, and people’s choices and value orientations have diversified. Superior economic conditions can neutralize and salvage these concepts to a certain extent, but they are ultimately negative. In regions with a minority population such as the 4 northeastern provinces, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia, and Xinjiang, these concepts can increase SWB, which is restricted by the local economic level and might just be a transitional form of insufficient development. appreciating the kindness of upbringing; treating parents well under any circumstances; giving up personal ambitions to fulfill parents’ wishes, positively influence individual SWB, especially when income is substantial. This indicates that some content in the filial piety highly esteemed by Chinese people has enduring value and can provide nourishment for people’s lives even in a high-paced modern society.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: Wang Peng

Data curation: Wang Peng

Methodology: Wang Peng

Resources: Wang Peng

Software: Wang Peng

Validation: Wang Peng

Visualization: Wang Peng

Writing – original draft: Wang Peng

Writing – review & editing: Wang Peng