What if spending money to protect the environment did not entail a cost, but rather a source of greater well-being? This study examines the relationship between willingness to pay to protect the environment, specifically to conserve water, and subjective well-being, using a representative sample of the adult population of Andalusia, a region in southern Spain (N=2277). We relate two measures of subjective well-being, life satisfaction and the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE), with an indicator of willingness to pay an additional amount annually to reduce water losses due to leaks and breaks by improving the condition of the distribution networks. The results show a significant positive association between subjective well-being and the willingness to pay to conserve water. Also, environmental motivation to pay more is positively related to subjective well-being, while income motivation is negatively related. The findings add to the evidence linking positively well-being and pro-environmental behaviour in different domains. We argue that all the evidence neglect the consideration of preserving the environment as a cost, and seeing as such is a focusing illusion on the economic dimension, that does not take into account other dimensions of human life.