The Local Environment and Subjective Well-being

This paper explores whether it is possible to use the well-being data collected in the survey Understanding Society to produce estimates of the cost put on local air pollution or proximity to a main road and the value placed on proximity to green space. The conclusions are rather negative. Calculations based on the 2012/13 wave point and the 2016/17 wave give very different answers, and a differences in differences approach shows no significant environmental effect. In the near term it seems unlikely that this approach could form a basis for the inclusion of environmental influences in measures of local well-being.