Sustainability and Subjective Well-Being (SWB) are strongly interrelated domains.
The way students view them and prioritize their dimensions should be factored into
curricular developments in education for sustainability. Instruments developed to
examine sustainability and SWB preferences typically use rating scale items to measure
dimensions as separate entities. In contrast, the question format used in this study
forces the students to rate variables in relation to each other. The sum of both SWB
and sustainability variables was fixed, which means that increasing the weight of
a priority automatically meant a decrease in the weight that could be allocated for
the remaining elements. Two-block Partial Least Squares (PLS) modelling was used to
examine how pre-defined SWB and sustainability dimensions behave when handled within
the same model. It was found that those who ordered the three sustainability dimensions
as Environment > Society > Economy tended to rank SWB dimensions as (Relations with
others, Inner peace) > (Health, Close to nature) > (Good job, Leisure). Our research
proved that the use of question formats resembling real-life resource allocation dilemmas
and the treatment of SWB and sustainability as one system can yield invaluable information
for the educational process.
