An Intellectual Capital Approach to Citizens’ Quality of Life in Sustainable Cities: A Focus on Europe

The quality of life of citizens in a city is related to the sustainable decisions made by their leaders. By using principal component analysis (PCA) and taking an intellectual capital perspective (all sources of knowledge in human, relational and structural areas), we explore which of the three dime...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSustainability Vol. 11; no. 21; p. 6025
Main Authors López-Ruiz, Víctor-Raúl, Alfaro-Navarro, José-Luis, Nevado-Peña, Domingo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.11.2019
Subjects
Cities
Economic indicators
Emissions
Environmental conditions
Environmental effects
Environmental policy
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
Integration
Intellectual capital
Knowledge
Literature reviews
Principal components analysis
Quality of life
Social factors
Sustainability
Sustainable development
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Summary:The quality of life of citizens in a city is related to the sustainable decisions made by their leaders. By using principal component analysis (PCA) and taking an intellectual capital perspective (all sources of knowledge in human, relational and structural areas), we explore which of the three dimensions used to measure the sustainability of a city—economic, social or environmental—has the greatest effect on a subjective measurement of quality of life. We propose an econometric model based on a tangible production model to study the relationship between the quality of life and sustainability. To that end, we perform an in-depth examination of the different effects on the four dimensions that comprise the measure of the subjective quality of life: satisfaction, mobility, integration and public service. The results of the estimated model of citizens’ quality of life confirm the existence of a direct relationship for the 52 European cities under study; however, the least relevant role is played by the environmental dimension, which is still unappreciated by citizens. Conversely, the economic and social dimension are found to be determinants in all cases, except for social integration. Therefore, a key requirement of the management aimed at achieving sustainable development in European cities is to activate the environmental dimension.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su11216025