The relationship between quality of life and local economic development: An empirical study of local authority areas in England

Recent academic literature has increasingly placed more emphasis on the importance of the quality of life factor to local economic development. High environmental quality, culturally desirable working and living conditions, and convenient local amenities are believed to be vital to foster economic growth and job creation by retaining local businesses and attracting inward investment. However, there is another argument that the initial attractiveness of the growing agglomeration economies will soon turn out to suffer from the negative impacts of growth in terms of a deteriorating quality of life. This paper aims to explore empirically the views of policy-makers in two English regions over the contribution of quality of life factors to the process of local economic development. It then uses a set of indicators to examine statistically the relationship between quality of life and other local economic development factors of 363 local authority areas in England. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.