Scholars and policymakers are increasingly interested in subjective well-being as a development indicator. However, sociological research on this topic is quite limited, as is research that considers the effects of the biophysical environment on subjective well-being. In this study, we address these gaps in the literature by examining social and environmental influences on life satisfaction, a core component of subjective well-being. We employed multi-level regression analysis using data from over 97,000 individuals living across ninety-six countries. The results demonstrated significant effects of several individual-level variables on life satisfaction, in particular respondents’ satisfaction with their local air and water quality and the efforts being made to preserve the environment in their country, as well as numerous social variables, such as income, gender, and employment status. Among the country-level variables, national gross domestic product per capita was positively associated with higher individual life satisfaction. Income inequality had a negative effect on life satisfaction, while wealth inequality, on the other hand, had a positive effect, a surprising finding we contemplate in some detail. The carbon intensity of a nation’s economy as well as the proportion of a nation’s land in protected areas only influenced life satisfaction when not controlling for the other variables. We conclude by discussing the implications of this research for sustainable development, including the promise of life satisfaction and other measures of subjective well-being as sustainable development indicators.

中文翻译：

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跨国社会和环境对生活满意度的影响


学者和政策制定者对将主观幸福感作为发展指标越来越感兴趣。然而，关于这个主题的社会学研究非常有限，考虑生物物理环境对主观幸福感影响的研究也是如此。在这项研究中，我们通过研究社会和环境对生活满意度（主观幸福感的核心组成部分）的影响来解决文献中的这些空白。我们使用来自 96 个国家/地区的 97,000 多名个人的数据进行多级回归分析。结果表明，几个个人层面的变量对生活满意度有显着影响，特别是受访者对当地空气和水质的满意度以及为保护本国环境所做的努力，以及许多社会变量，例如收入、性别和就业状况。在国家层面的变量中，国家人均国内生产总值与较高的个人生活满意度呈正相关。收入不平等对生活满意度产生负面影响，而另一方面，财富不平等则产生积极影响，这是我们仔细考虑的一个令人惊讶的发现。在不控制其他变量的情况下，一个国家经济的碳强度以及一个国家保护区内土地的比例只会影响生活满意度。最后，我们讨论了这项研究对可持续发展的影响，包括生活满意度的承诺和作为可持续发展指标的其他主观幸福感衡量标准。