The Relationship Between Social Connectedness and Subjective Well-Being in Chinese Couples: An Actor-Partner-Interdependence Model Analysis

Social connectedness is closely related to subjective well-being. Previous research has focused on the impact of individuals and neglected the analysis of their complex relationship at the couple level. This study was aimed at analyzing the interrelationship between the social connectedness and subjective well-being of couples. The data was taken from the 2020 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS 2020) and included variables such as socio-demographics, subjective well-being, social connectedness, marital satisfaction, subjective social status and mental health. Based on IBM SPSS 24.0 and Mplus 8.0, this study used Shapley decomposition and constructed the actor-partner-interdependence model to assess the associations between couples. This study included 12,164 married participants from China, including 6082 husbands (age: mean = 49.97, standard deviation = 13.69) and 6082 wives (age: mean = 48.23, standard deviation = 13.57). The results demonstrated that Chinese wives had significantly lower levels of subjective well-being than their husbands. Social connectedness contributed much more to the subjective well-being of both spouses than sociodemographic characteristics, marital satisfaction, mental health, subjective social status and other factors. The actor effect showed a positive effect of couples' social connectedness on subjective well-being (husbands: standardized coefficient = 0.388, p < 0.001; wives: standardized coefficient = 0.382, p < 0.001). The partner effect was different, as the social connectedness of wives exerted a significant positive effect on the subjective well-being of husbands (standardized coefficient = 0.030, p = 0.013), while the partner effect of husbands was not significant. Wives' social connectedness affected the subjective well-being of both spouses, whereas that of husbands did not. This study reveals differences in the relationship between the social connectedness and subjective well-being of Chinese couples based on socio-cultural contexts. More attention and support should be given to wives to enhance the well-being of couples.