The Relationship Between Community Capitals and Quality of Life in Rural and Aboriginal Western Canadian Communities: Improving Policymaking Using a Place-Conscious Approach

Abstract

Policymakers around the world now recognize that quality of life is an important indicator of what actually matters to communities. Also referred to as well-being, satisfaction, or happiness, quality of life is a complex, multidimensional construct pertaining to one’s place of residence, physical environment, social characteristics, experiences, and access to services within one’s local environment. Given the close relationship between local conditions and quality of life, using community capitals, or latent measures of the current state of communities’ various resources and capacities, to measure quality of life may provide policymakers with a more useful quality of life measure. This study uses secondary survey data to examine whether there is a relationship between community capitals and reported quality of life in rural western Canada. To explore quality of life as a product of the communities in which community capital stocks are created and experienced, this thesis will also examine whether and how the relationships between quality of life and community capitals may differ across Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities in the study region. The results may help policymakers understand how different types of communities conceptualize themselves, as well as how they may pursue place-conscious policies that build upon current community capitals to maintain or improve quality of life in these communities in the future.