An environment and comprehensive wellbeing (ECW) conceptual framework: exploring environmental relationships with objective and subjective wellbeing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new framework that connects environmental factors with both objective and subjective wellbeing, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Contribution

The novel ECW framework explores how objective and subjective wellbeing interact within environmental contexts.

Findings

The framework reveals a context-specific dichotomy between low objective and high subjective wellbeing in drought-impacted areas.

Combining objective and subjective wellbeing provides a more complete understanding of environmental impacts on communities.

The framework supports multiscale research and is applicable in environmentally vulnerable regions like the Volta Delta.

Abstract

Wellbeing and environment are inherently interlinked and, as such, should be supported by a framework that captures multiple relationships between people and ecosystems. A comprehensive wellbeing assessment encompasses broad objective and subjective indicators which account for local community and governance priorities, and acknowledge wellbeing as relational to the time and space it is constructed. While existing frameworks address components of the environment-wellbeing system, they often do not incorporate comprehensive wellbeing within an environmental context. The Environment and Comprehensive Wellbeing framework addresses this gap, supporting research on the impacts of climatic hazards, landscape characteristics, and environmental policy interventions upon wellbeing in low- and middle-income countries. The framework is novel in its exploration of how objective and subjective wellbeing interact, and how the relational context, including environmental conditions over various timescales, impact these relationships. Despite being primarily designed to explore local wellbeing, the framework contains sufficient breadth to facilitate multiscale research. The framework is applied to a mixed-method example in Volta Delta, Ghana. The prominence of subsistence agriculture within the environmentally vulnerable delta accentuates the interconnectivity between livelihoods, wellbeing and environment. Applying this novel framework provides a platform for a deeper understanding of the findings. For example, a context-specific dichotomy between low objective and high subjective wellbeing was illustrated in drought-impacted agricultural areas. Research deploying an exclusively objective approach may have omitted information on how collective community norms could promote sustainable activities, while a subjective approach may have overlooked requirements for more-immediate material support, highlighting the synergistic benefit of encompassing subjective and objective wellbeing.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11111-026-00518-w.

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