Urban-Rural Dichotomy of Quality of Life

Abstract

This paper is focused on the urban-rural dichotomy as one of the dichotomies of quality of life (QOL). The first objective is to find out whether the quality of urban life, or the quality of rural life, is higher in Czechia. The hypothesis assumes that the quality of urban life is higher. The second objective is to identify predictors of QOL and compare values for the residents of cities and villages. In the Theoretical Background section, we discuss cities and urban life, plus villages and rural life. In the QOL section, we explore the quality of urban and rural life in Czechia, and give examples of QOL measurements in Czech municipalities. In the Measurement and Findings section we measure QOL with a subjective indicator on the Cantril scale, and derive findings from these measurements. The correlations between QOL and other variables yield very strong predictors of both urban and rural quality of life. The measurements also yielded two “by products”: The first was the finding that women’s measured values are, except for women’s quality of city life, higher than the measured values of men. The second was the finding that the combination of quality of place and quality of the environment, which we named ‘geographical matter’, was rated higher by the respondents than the combination of QOL and happiness, which we named ‘psychological matter’.

The Estimate of Parental Quality of Life Loss Due to Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Hospitalization

“…Except for this minor contradiction, a separate general comment on the value sets is needed as well; the value sets are calculated for particular populations, mostly countries, and the results obtained from the (actually) same answers to the questions on the five dimensions may vary. The differences may derive from the methodological aspects of the value sets calculations [ 45 ] but may also be related to the cultural, linguistic, urban/rural residence, healthcare system or sociodemographic differences; while the regional value sets are preferred, in the case of lack of local estimations, supra-national value sets for clusters of countries might be used in order to optimize the assessment [ 46 , 47 , 48 ]. Regarding our study, we need to emphasize that the local Polish value sets were used for the descriptive system, while the EQ VAS seems to be a more universal assessment.…”

Quality of place as the winner of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of quality of life. Will this knowledge strengthen the development of geographical psychology?

“…This was not reached for quality of place. To assess whether any of these variables is a predictor of quality of life or not, we have arbitrarily set a correlation value of 0.30 and higher according to the verbal assessment of the predictors [ 47 ] ( Table 7 ).…”

“…Quality of life or related concepts in the first wave of the pandemic have been investigated by researchers in several countries: in Luxembourg, Germany and Brazil by Abreu et al [ 8 ], in China by Chen et al [ 9 ], in Spain by Iglesias-López et al [ 11 ], in the US state of New Jersey by Murray [ 44 ], in Portugal by Gaspar et al [ 45 ], in Czechia the quality of life investigated by Murgaš and Petrovič [ 10 ], happiness by Petrovič et al [ 12 ], mental health by Kučera et al [ 46 ], life satisfaction by Public Opinion Research Centre [ 38 ] and well-being by Maturkanič et al [ 47 ].…”

What Can We Expect for the Development of Rural Areas in Europe?—Trends of the Last Decade and Their Opportunities for Rural Regeneration

“…However, rurality can also be seen as a counter-image to urbanity [10], which is questioned by other authors such as Cattaneo [11], who argues that the definition of rural can be placed in the context of the urban-rural continuum. Researchers increasingly agree that the simple dichotomy between "rural" and "urban" is highly problematic [12,13]. In fact, human settlements, with large villages, small towns, and small urban centers that are often indistinguishable, exist along a continuum from "rural" to "urban".…”