The regional heterogeneity of wellbeing ‘expenditure’ preferences: evidence from a simulated allocation choice on the BES indicators§

Abstract

With an online survey on major Italian newspapers we ask respondents to simulate the typical policymaker decision, that is, the dilemma of allocating scarce financial resources among alternative competing goals using the domains of the newly defined Italian BES (sustainable and equitable wellbeing) indicators. Our main finding is that homogeneity of choices is rejected since preferred allocations are strongly affected by socio-demographic factors and mainly by political orientation, age, education and gender. An important related result is that education and political orientation significantly affect preferences toward sustainable development. We as well find that respondents’ expenditure preferences on a given BES domain are mainly affected by the relative scarcity/abundance of wellbeing on that given domain at the regional level.