Individual life-satisfaction across Italian regions: the role of socio-cultural environments and tourism

Abstract Cultural heritage and social capital represent founding elements for present and future generations and communities. The two components can coexist or be present in different combinations at the territorial level, and they may play an important role in enhancing subjective feelings of satisfaction and psychological conditions. Moreover, when reasoning on cultural heritage, its relationship with tourism cannot be overlooked. On the one hand, tourism may contribute to the valorization of cultural heritage, and therefore to life-satisfaction, while on the other hand it could hinder the development of positive feelings through undesired congestion effects. The present work, explicitly taking a regional and territorial perspective, puts forward the idea that different territorial contexts in terms of cultural heritage and social capital may differently affect individual life-satisfaction and that this mechanism can be influenced by touristic flows. Proposing a territorial taxonomy of Italian NUTS2 regions and exploiting microdata collected by the Italian National Statistical Office (ISTAT), the paper presents a multilevel (nested) econometric analysis linking territorial socio-cultural categories to the level of individual life-satisfaction, also considering the role of tourism within this mechanism.