The contribution of a regional industrial sector toward quality of life and sustainable development: indicators and preliminary results

Abstract

The present paper presents a method developed within the project ‘Regional Wealth Reconsidered’ for estimating the contributions toward quality of life and sustainable devel-opment made by a regional industrial sector consisting of SMEs. It is organized as follows: In Section 2, we describe the overall analytical framework of the method, the development process for the indicator set, and the empirical design. Section 3 provides insight on prelimi-nary empirical results of a study investigating the organic agriculture and food sector in the Brandenburg-Berlin region, Germany. In particular, we present data about four fields of activ-ity that are assumed to: (1) contribute toward ‘human potential’ through formal and informal education, (2) contribute toward the stabilization of social resources, (3) improve non-material quality of life aspects, and (4) contribute toward environmental protection and aes-thetic attractiveness of the region’s landscape. In Section 4, we summarize our findings and draw conclusions about the method itself and the kind of information it generated.