Sustainability in urban vs rural areas: a comparison of subjective and objective indicators across European countries

In this paper, starting from the approach described in Chiarini et al. (2017), who have provided a subjective measure of the environmental impact of cities (subjective EIC) at the country level, we extend the analysis comparing their indicator with the objective measure of the environmental impact of cities (objective EIC) suggested by Agenda 2030, namely mean levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10). The comparison between subjective and objective indicators of the EIC is a novelty in the panorama of the available studies, and provides useful results for policy analysis. In fact, the relative ranking of countries changes according to the metric adopted, and the analysis of association with macroeconomic indicators of development and growth reveal that subjective and objective EIC indicators might influence/be influenced by different macrofactors.