Sustainable development and quality of life: expected effects of prospective changes in economic and environmental...

In the context of "sustainable development", we studied which attributes are important to people's quality of life (QoL) and which changes in QoL people would expect from future economic and environmental improvements or deteriorations. About 200 adult subjects evaluated the relative importance of 22 different QoL attributes. They subsequently indicated expected changes in those attributes, under three different scenarios in which economic and environmental conditions would either improve or deteriorate. On average, subjects judged the QoL attributes "healthy", "family", "environmental quality", "nature" and "safety" to be most important, while "recognition", "comfort", "status" and "spiritual life" were found least important. The most important QoL attributes as well as "security" were judged as more important by women than by men. Also observed were income and age effects on relative attribute importance. Our (Dutch) subjects expected significant and varied negative QoL changes from an environmental-deterioration scenario involving either an improved or a deteriorated economy. In contrast, they had mixed positive-negative QoL expectations about environmental improvement combined with economic deterioration. Subjects high in environmental concern assigned greater weight to "environmental" QoL attributes, and they expected environmental improvement versus deterioration to more strongly affect their QoL-attributes "environmental quality", "nature", "health" and "unity with nature", than did subjects low in environmental concern. We conclude that quality of life can be meaningfully conceived as a multi-attribute value concept, useful for assessing the expected effects of future economic and environmental conditions. Suggestions are given for methodological improvement and for further research.