PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION (2021) 58(5), ISSN 1553 - 6939 Article Received: 22th November, 2020; Article Revised: 26th March, 2021; Article Accepted: 26th April, 2021 3317 www.psychologyandeducation.net Subjective Well-Being in Tourism Research Nguyen Hoang Tien 1 , Dinh Ba Hung Anh 2 , Pham Bich Ngoc 3 , Tran Thi Thuy Trang 4* , Le Doan Minh Duc 5 1 Saigon International University, Vietnam 2 Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, Vietnam 3 Vietnam Institute of Economics, Vietnam 4 Van Lang University, Vietnam 5 University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam *thuytrangvn81@yahoo.com ABSTRACT The “Economics of happiness” is increasingly an interest topic and subject of concern in the modern society, both in th eories and practices of contemporary economics and management science. Especially, when it comes to the issue of subjective well-being, the evidence is reflected in growing number of articles published in the mainstream and reputable journals. The study in this paper uses qualitative research through the synthesis and evaluation of published articles on the issue of subjective well-being in the field of tourism to provide guidance and orientation for future research. Specifically, we focus our evaluation on the three main areas strictly related to subjective well-being: theoretical framework of subjective well-being; factors affecting subjective well- being; finally, limitations of current research to discover new directions for further research. Keywords (Times New Roman, bold, 9) Subjective Well-being; Tourism; Happiness. Introduction World tourism industry continues to grow strongly and has a great influence on socio- economic life globally. Tourism has become one of the main pillars of international trade, an important and rising source of income for both developed and developing countries. Therefore, for a long time so far in the business and management literature, there were many research activities with different approaches striving to clarify the behavior of tourists in order to attract them more to come to visit and to and return to tourism destinations in order to explore local potential of services (Su et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2018; Mitas & Kroesen, 2019). In recent years, the number of studies examining subjective well-being (or subjective happiness) in tourism has been increasing (Dolan et al., 2008). Several studies have shown that visitor's subjective well-being affects the intention of behavior (Ja Kim et al., 2020; Kim et al., 2015) and subjective well-being is a positive function of satisfaction with travel and tourism experiences (Chen et al, 2016). Concepts and Models of Subjective Well-being The definition of subjective well-being (subjective happiness) was first mentioned through Campbell's (1976) study of subjective factors within the sequence of personal experiences. In another study, concepts including health, comfort, wealth, virtue, and appearance were identified by Kammann (1983) as factors affecting individual well-being. Thus, the subjective happiness in tourism research is understood in many different directions according to different theoretical backgrounds. If based on the three theoretical backgrounds of desire theory, hedonistic theory and authentic happiness theory (Parfit, 1984; Haybron, 2008), the definition of Diener (1984) and model of the subjective happiness (Figure 1) are considered appropriate, that explains why it is widely used in the field of tourism.