Suchergebnisse

En los últimos años, la ciencia se ha preocupado de estudiar la felicidad y sus causas. Sin embargo, en los estudios no se ha prestado demasiada atención a grupos de individuos que comparten una idea bastante personal sobre qué es el bienestar, que va más allá de la opinión occidental. El presente texto pretende analizar las posibles ventajas e inconvenientes, así como las limitaciones y aportaciones, que los estudios de felicidad pueden ocasionar en la comprensión del Buen Vivir de los pueblos indígenas latinoamericanos. También sacaremos conclusiones sobre qué puede aportar el Buen Vivir a los estudios de la felicidad.

En este trabajo pretendemos analizar los determinantes de la satisfacción con la vida de los/as inmigrantes en España y las diferencias con los/as autóctonos/as. Las preguntas clave son las siguientes: ¿Es más infeliz la población inmigrante que la autóctona? ¿Existen diferencias entre los distintos factores relacionados con la felicidad de ambas poblaciones? Los resultados indican que, controlando por variables económicas y sociales, los/as inmigrantes están más insatisfechos/as que los/as autóctonos/as. Sin embargo, los resultados sugieren que el impacto de la crisis y las diferencias de ingresos condicionan la relación entre ser inmigrante y la satisfacción con la vida.

Research that tries to explain the decisions of local government in the contracting out of certain services frequently disregards the temporal dimension. In this article, the authors take time into account in the analysis, proposing a duration model as an alternative to discrete choice models. The objective is to analyze the explanatory factors in the contracting out of municipal services. This methodology is applied to the water services of 744 municipalities in southern Spain during the period from 1985 to 2006. From the results, the authors conclude that complexity in the environment, economies of scale, financial restrictions, and stability of the local government are determinants in the decision.

AbstractOne of the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 6 is to increase water use efficiency in all sectors. In the domestic sphere, water consumption is largely conditioned by the habits and behaviour of individuals. In this study, we investigate for the first time the influence of connectedness to and contact with nature on five different uses of water at home. Using ordered probit regressions with a sample of 874 students from the University of Granada (Spain), we found that connectedness to nature and nature contact is positively or non‐significantly related to different dimensions of water efficiency. The results indicate that in order to encourage pro‐environmental water use habits at home, efforts should be made to develop an ecocentric vision in schools and to promote school trips to explore and understand the nearest natural areas. These policies should be adapted to a wider international context as a way of addressing the global problem of water scarcity.

This paper illustrates the importance of a balanced approach to sustainable development through the analysis of needs-based workshops in Granada, a Spanish city hit hard by the recent economic crisis. The workshops followed Max-Neef's Human Scale Development proposal that highlights the interdependence of social, economic and environmental systems and stresses the centrality of participatory processes and human needs satisfaction. This understanding of human development aligns with the approach to sustainable development popularised by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, which called for the satisfaction of the needs of both current and future generations together with a balanced articulation of the social, economic and environmental dimensions of development. In practice, and even more so in times of economic crisis, governments are seen to prioritise the economic dimension over the environmental and the societal dimensions through their primary focus on policies to foster economic growth. However, people experiencing unemployment and poor economic prospects may not be in favour of this unbalanced, economic-driven approach. In Granada, participants in needs-based workshops did not emphasise the importance of economic prosperity and job creation when discussing policy goals and interventions to improve needs satisfaction. Economic interventions, such as providing universal coverage of basic needs, were seen as interdependent with personal and institutional transformations aimed at empowering workers and promoting citizen participation, and with environmental initiatives concerning the conservation of local natural spaces and the spread of urban gardening. Guillen-Royo, Mònica, Jorge Guardiola, and Fernando Garcia-Quero. "Sustainable development in times of economic crisis: A needs-based illustration from Granada (Spain)." Journal of Cleaner Production 150 (2017): 267-276. © 2017. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

The study of happiness or subjective well-being has traditionally been studied within the disciplines of psychology or sociology. Although economics has contemplated happiness in research terms, it has only recently been studied in any depth. In this paper we offer several proposals in order to investigate the relationship between water access and happiness, suggesting some situations that would merit further research. Moreover, we have included some methodological notes in order to achieve this objective. This relationship can be useful in two ways. Firstly, it can favour the contemplation of water access as a human right. Secondly, it can serve as a framework for the decision-making process carried out by Governments and NGOs in developing countries.

A qualitative study of the main characteristics of sumak kawsay ( buen vivir, living well/good life) in the Ecuadorian Amazon shows that it has four constitutive elements of which a multitude of interpretations coexist: an indigenous and nature-focused worldview, community, an economy based on solidarity, and ancestral knowledge. Understandings of sumak kawsay are rooted in the practices and beliefs of the communities interviewed rather than in theoretical constructions of idyllic community forms, and in this connection differences can be observed between the academic "indigenist" view of it and local discourses. Una aproximación cualitativa a las características principales del sumak kawsay ( buen vivir, living well/good life) en la Amazonía ecuatoriana muestran la existencia de cuatro elementos constitutivos del sumak kawsay en los que colindan multitud de interpretaciones: cosmovisión indígena y naturaleza, comunidad, economía solidaria, y conocimiento ancestral. Las comprensiones del sumak kawsay enraízan con prácticas y creencias de las personas y no con construcciones teóricas de formas comunitarias idílicas, y al respecto, apreciamos diferencias entre la visión académica "indigenista" del sumak kawsay y los discursos locales.

AbstractIn light of the growing interest and potential of the Life Satisfaction Approach (LSA) to value environmental attributes, this research paper aims to estimate the monetary value of water supply infrastructure improvements using this novel approach. A theoretical framework compares this method with the widely used contingent valuation method (CVM), highlighting the pros and cons of both approaches. Results show that the LSA can generate meaningful values of the nonmarket benefits derived from improving water supply infrastructure, based on the impact that such benefits can have on individuals' life satisfaction. In addition, these values are not different from those obtained from the CVM. Thus the LSA arises as a useful complement to the more traditional methods while expanding the array of techniques available for the economic valuation of environmental goods in a cost benefit framework.

Why do some local governments privatize water services, while others opt for public management? Economic literature has been unable to demonstrate that private management is more efficient than public management, so there must be other reasons that lead governments to privatize the service. But what are they? This paper presents the results of a study that analyses the factors behind the privatization of water services with data from 741 municipalities located in the South of Spain over a period dating from 1985 to 2006. A discrete choice model analyses the influence of each factor on the likelihood of privatization. One of the novelties of this paper is that we take the value of the explanatory variables at the time when water services are privatized. Among our findings, it is worth highlighting the importance of the size of municipalities, their financial burden and the neighbouring effect. Adapted from the source document.