Association of environmental and sociodemographic factors with life satisfaction in 27 European countries

Abstract

Background: Life satisfaction is a cognitive and evaluative judgement of one’s outlook on life and an integral component of subjective wellbeing. There is a strong association between life satisfaction and mental and physical health, but it is currently unclear how environmental factors may influence life satisfaction. Our aim was to investigate the association between environmental factors and life satisfaction and to gain a better understanding of general life satisfaction statistics in the EU.

Methods: We used a three-level mixed effects logistic regression model to examine the effects of sociodemographic, macroeconomic and environmental factors on life satisfaction using a large sample size from Eurobarometer surveys (n = 268,696) representative of 27 EU countries. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews between May 2014 and June 2015.

Results: We found wide variation between countries, as well as between regions within the same country with regards to levels of life satisfaction. Having adjusted for individual sociodemographic factors, our analysis did not indicate statistically significant associations of mean temperature and precipitation with life satisfaction. However, there was a statistically significant association between environmental degradation and lower life satisfaction (OR = 0.98; 95% CI: 0.97–1.00). Consistent with existing literature, our results show statistically significant effects of sociodemographic factors such as sex, financial situation and employment on life satisfaction.

Conclusions: Future research should extend analyses to a wider range of sociodemographic, macroeconomic and geographical variables to gain insight on all possible factors affecting life satisfaction to inform policy makers and ensure higher quality of life, and in turn better mental and physical health.