A Regional Analysis of Well-Being and Resilience Capacity in Europe

The definition of well-being and the search for its determinants has led to a spread of models analyzing collective happiness and life satisfaction. We position our paper among the studies on the role played by the territory on well-being considering the conceptual background of sustainability and, more in detail, the resilience area. In our study on the determinants of regional well-being, 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 past 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.