A Regional Analysis of Wellbeing and Resilience Capacity in Europe

The definition of wellbeing and the subsequent search for its determinants are the subject of a great deal of debate and the focus of numerous surveys at national and international level. This has led to a spread of models analyzing collective happiness, life satisfaction and quality of life. We position our paper among the studies on the role of territory on individual and community wellbeing considering the conceptual background of sustainability and, more in detail, the resilience area (OECD, 2014). In our study on the determinants of regional wellbeing, a sustainability-oriented approach- from both a subjective and an objective point of view – is proposed. Our aim is to analyze the effect of adaptation capacity on life satisfaction, studying the role played by resilience in its economic, social and environmental dimensions. The econometric analysis is applied to 238 European regions at NUTS-2 level observed over the last decade. The main empirical result is that resilience is highly significant in explaining life satisfaction: the more resilient the region is, the more satisfied its inhabitants are.