Social Weather Report | 67% of Adult Filipinos Express Their Love Through Acts of Service, Making It the Most Common of the Five Love Languages

Love and companionship top the wish list of Valentine’s gifts, followed by Money and Flowers
A record-low 46% say they are very happy with their love life, 36% could be happier, and 18% have no love life

By Social Weather Station

Sixty-seven percent of adult Filipinos express their love through Acts of service, making it the most common of the five love languages, based on the national Social Weather Survey of December 12-18, 2024.

Examples of Acts of service include cooking a meal, running errands, helping with chores, or fixing things around the house, even without being asked.

Following the top love language are Words of affirmation and Quality time, with 51% each, Giving gifts, with 33%, and Physical touch, with 29% [Figure 1].

Aligned with the love languages, the December 2024 survey found that Love and companionship topped the wish list of Valentine’s gifts with 19%, surpassing Money (10%) which was last year's most cited wish for a Valentine’s gift [Figure 2].

Love and companionship were the most wished for Valentine’s gift among both men (20%) and women (17%), followed by Any gift from the heart (9%) and Flowers (8%) among men, and Money (15%) and Flowers (12%) among women.

The December 2024 survey also found a record-low 46% of Filipinos saying they were very happy with their love life, 36% saying they could be happier, and 18% saying they have no love life. The latest percentage of 46% very happy with their love life was 12 points down from 58% in December 2023, and the lowest in 20 years since it was first reached in 2004 [Figure 3].

Compared to 2023, happiness with love life fell among both men and women across civil status, especially among men with live-in partners.

The Fourth Quarter 2024 Social Weather Survey was conducted from December 12 to 18, 2024, using face-to-face interviews of 2,160 adults (18 years old and above) nationwide: 1,080 in Balance Luzon (or Luzon outside Metro Manila), and 360 each in Metro Manila, the Visayas, and Mindanao. Face-to-face is the standard interviewing method for Social Weather Stations; the only exceptions were early in the pandemic when movement restrictions made face-to-face impossible and mobile phone interviews were conducted. Normal face-to-face field operations resumed in November 2020. The sampling error margins are ±2% for national percentages, ±3% in Balance Luzon, and ±5% each for Metro Manila, the Visayas, and Mindanao.

The area estimates were weighted by the Philippine Statistics Authority medium-population projections for 2024 to obtain the national estimates.

The survey items reported here were non-commissioned. They were included on SWS's initiative and released as a public service.

The exact phrasing of the survey questions (the source language is Filipino; English translation included) is shown in Figure 4.

SWS employs its own staff for questionnaire design, sampling, fieldwork, data processing, and analysis, and does not outsource any of its survey operations. This report was prepared by Agatha Therese B. Vitug.

Figure 1