Urban quality of life amidst COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia: do economic and geographical factors influence quality of life?

ABSTRACT Urban areas have always been an attraction for the population. As a result, urbanization is constantly happening as more people migrate to cities. This is since urban areas have become a hope for improving the quality of life. This study aims to measure and analyze the Quality of Life (QoL) Index and the influence of economic and geographical factors on the urban QoL during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data used in this study is the Socio-Economic Survey (SUSENAS) in 2020 from the Indonesian Central Statistics Agency. The findings show that larger cities tend to have a good QoL index. Meanwhile, remote cities or island regions have a low QoL, as indicated by a low QoL Index. population density, per capita consumption expenditure, and urban economic growth positively influence the urban QoL.


Introduction
Urban development always focuses on human development to improve welfare, which is designated by citizens' quality of life.Community welfare is measured by changes in economic indicators such as the increase of income and changes in non-economic indicators such as social aspects.Two measures often used to measure the quality of life are the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI).The development of human quality of life performed in many countries has attempted to increase all indexes by an agreement on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), followed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), by 17 targets, namely the economic, social, political, and environmental fields.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports eight indicators used to measure the quality of life (OECD, 2011).The OECD also distinguishes between current well-being and future well-being.Current well-being is measured in terms of the results achieved, divided into two main groups: material living conditions (income and health, employment and income, housing conditions), and quality of life.At the same time, future well-being is measured by several vital resources that drive wellbeing over time, which are continually influenced by current actions (OECD, 2013).
The urban quality of life index of Indonesia's largest cities (WPR, 2020), in this case, the 9 largest cities were selected based on population and referring to the urban quality of life indicators released by (Numbeo, 2020) as presented in Figure 1.Based on the urban quality of life index by seven indicators, namely the purchasing power index, security index, health index, climate index, cost of living index, asset price ratio to income, congestion index, and pollution index, it shows that big cities such as Jakarta and Medan have a low quality of life index.However, Surabaya City and Bandung City are the second and third largest cities with a high quality of life index.Likewise, Semarang City, in the eighth position, has a very good quality of life index.From this can be illustrated that the size of the city does not determine the quality of life.
Urban development is now a concern in many countries.This is due to the growing development of urban areas as indicated by the increasing level of urbanization and has become a global phenomenon (Li et al., 2016;Sharma et al., 2020;UN, 2019).Even urbanization has various impacts on ecosystems (Peng et al., 2017) and has become one of the characteristics of social development (Allington et al., 2017;Zhao et al., 2016).Particular attention on the development of urban areas is also related to the city as the center and engine of economic growth of a country or region (Duranton, 2008;Jamal, 2017).Additionally, urban areas contribute about 60 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (UN, 2020).
As a growth center, it is ensured that economic growth and development are faster than in nonurban areas.Many studies declared that economic growth could improve community welfare; some researchers claimed it does not occur (Mikucka et al., 2017).Many studies also revealed that there are robust disparities between urban areas and rural areas, such as socioeconomic disparities (Alesina & Perotti, 1996;Hope & Edge, 1996), urban-rural conflicts, and imbalances in urban-rural development (Wang et al., 2019), even inequality in mental health (Summers-Gabr, 2020;Xu et al., 2018), and many other studies discuss the disparities between urban and rural such as research conducted by (Liu et al., 2017;Pong et al., 2009;Srinivasan et al., 2013;Wen et al., 2013).
The regional economic activities of cities become a magnet for villagers, so urbanization continues to occur.They hope for better living conditions in the city or urban area and a better quality of life.As (O'Sullivan, 2012) points out, there are several benefits from a larger urban economy: better employment opportunities, better learning environments, and better social interaction opportunities.This is certainly a dilemma for the city as a shelter for migrants from villages.
Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic that occurred since the end of 2019 has had a widespread impact worldwide, especially in the cities in Indonesia.Research (Lohmann et al., 2023) revealed that exposure to COVID-19 has increased anti-social behavior in society.This is due to the high fear of the community against the disease.The study's results (Khoirunurrofik et al., 2022) stated that Covid impacted the economy, especially in wealthier and more urban areas, which tended to experience a decrease in high mobility.
Even though cities are magnets and growth centers, the imbalances among cities remain, either income inequality, growing inequality, or strata differences (Bagchi-Sen et al., 2020;Nijman & Wei, 2020).Thus, will migrants improve the city's economy or conversely become a burden for the city by increasing the number of unemployment?Based on this description, it is interesting to analyze the quality of life in Indonesian cities to describe well-being in the urban region.Does a bigger city provide a better level of quality of life?What macroeconomic and social factors encourage a better quality of life in urban areas?Do geographic factors influence quality of life?

Concept and defining quality of life
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines the quality of life as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of diseases.In addition, the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL) defines the quality of life as an individual perception of life in society within a cultural context and the existing value systems related to goals, expectations, standards, and concerns.Quality of life has a broad concept that is influenced by an individual's physical condition, psychology, level of independence, as well as the individual relationship with the environment, including health, comfort, security, relationships, learning, freedom for expression, opportunity, political, social, and leisure participation.It also explains that quality of life refers to a subjective evaluation embedded in a cultural, social, and environmental context (World Health Organization, 2012).Even the OECD reports the eight indicators used to measure the quality of life, namely health status, work and life balance, education and skills, social relations, political participation, environmental quality, personal security, and happiness (OECD, 2011).
Moreover, a researcher distinguishes the understanding between the quality of life and its synonymwell-being against welfare, as described by (Havasi, 2013).The word well-being has a broad meaning that indicates a multidimensional aspect.He distinguishes that improving the quality of life or wellbeing is the goal of economic development while improving welfare is the goal of economic growth.Even though other researchers stated that quality of life is not clearly defined (Das, 2008;Royuela et al., 2010), there is still an agreement on the factors used, although the debate is still going on.Measurement of quality of life depends on objective perspective.The use of measurement indicators may differ as long as they are expected to influence the quality of life potentially.
As mentioned by (Murgaš, 2016), some researchers explain the concept of quality of life as a good life, so it is defined as the degree to which human life reaches a better standard of living.A good life occurs because of the existence of a good society, or vice versa.Some researchers believe that social indicators alone cannot explain the quality of life.Quality of life reflects how a society can fulfill its desires.People have different reactions in the same environment and conditions, then evaluate their expectations (Diener et al., 1999).Thus, several indicators are proposed in measuring the quality of life, namely social indicators such as health, levels of crime, subjective well-being (measurement of the evaluation of community reactions to their lives and societies), and economic indices (Diener & Suh, 1997).
Several researchers also distinguish the quality of life in the dimension of objective and subjective indicators (Betti et al., 2016;Das, 2008;Diener & Suh, 1997;Havasi, 2013;Ira & Andráško, 2007;Krinitcyna et al., 2016;Murgaš, 2016;Sepasgozar et al., 2019;Zhang et al., 2020) Otherwise, (Murgaš, 2016) distinguishes it as wellbeing (subjective) and quality of place (objective) and (Ira & Andráško, 2007) distinguishes subjective dimension as individual, private, and personal, while the objective dimension is defined as public, environmental and social.Due to the complexity of the dimension of quality of life, it is recommended to incorporate objective and subjective indicators in analyzing the quality of life (Das, 2008).

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on cities
The COVID-19 pandemic that occurred since the end of 2019 has had a widespread impact worldwide.Indonesia is one of the countries that has also received its effects since the beginning of 2020.The impacts have spread from cities to remote villages.Cities are the areas that have suffered the most from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.Even the policies implemented are tough to control cases and fatalities (Handayani et al., 2022).The economic and business sectors of the people's welfare were greatly affected.The results of the research show that there are negative impacts on the economy, such as negative economic growth and poverty in all provinces of Indonesia (Malahayati et al., 2021;Pham & Nugroho, 2022), an increase in unemployment and a decrease in the quality of life as a psychological impact (Aksoy et al., 2021;Paz-rodríguez et al., 2023).

Data and methodology
This research examines the quality of life, especially the urban quality of life in Indonesia.This study focuses on cities because the cities are significantly affected by COVID-19 pandemic as stated in research by (Khoirunurrofik et al., 2022).The indicators used in the analysis of quality of life incorporate subjective and objective dimensions as defined and suggested in many studies.The indicators which are defined by the OECD become the starting point in defining indicators in this study.
The study is limited to calculating the quality-of-life index based on the data available from SUSENAS (National Social Economic Survey) and analyzing macroeconomic variables that are thought to affect the quality-of-life index.The data used in this study is primary data resulting from the SUSENAS survey in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.The primary data is reprocessed according to the required variables and analysis.The research locations are urban areas of Indonesia, and the samples are one central city and two others randomly selected from each province.The sampling respondents were all respondents determined by BPS from the survey.
The number of selected cities is a sample of 67 cities out of 98 cities from 33 provinces in Indonesia.
Meanwhile, the number of respondents reached 167,362 respondents.Under the availability of SUSE-NAS survey data, this analysis uses seven variables with 29 indicators.The seven variables are: a. Health, b.Work and life balance, c.Education, d.Social-relations, e. Personal security, f.The feeling of happiness and, g.Purchasing power.
A quantitative method is used in this study.The measurement was done to measure the Quality of Life (QOL) Index for selected cities from each province of Indonesia.The measurement of the index by using a mathematical approach from (Puskorius, 2015), namely: where a and b are indicator weight coefficients and indicator status summary values, respectively, and i is the number of quality-of-life indicators.To calculate the summary value of the status indicator, the following model is used: where a certain value of ( j) indicator is used for summary estimation of (i) certain population indicators and the weight coefficient of certain indicators, respectively.Meanwhile, if the indicator is measured on a qualitative scale, the formula used is: The weight coefficient used in this study is the coefficient calculated by experts for each city.
Furthermore, econometric analysis is used to measure the relationship between macroeconomic variables and quality of life index, namely multiple regression analysis.
I is the QOL Index, X is Population Density (PopDens), Household Consumption Expenditure per capita (HCECap), both are in natural logarithm value and Economic Growth (EG) as macroeconomic factors, and City Location (Loc) as geographical factor, while i is the number of cities that are research subjects.

Results and discussion
4.1.Employment, household, and social activities arrangement Each resident working or unemployed could have various other activities, whether due to their responsibilities, hobbies, or as a sense of solidarity in social life.
Table 1 expresses how the activities of city dwellers running into their lives amid the COVID-19 plagued them.
In general, it can be explained that the employed or unemployed urban population, about 63.94 percent, do not participate in social activities.Only 36.06 percent take care of it.The population who also take care of the household and social activities reached 32.59 percent of the employed population.Only 26.60 percent of the employed population are just working.About 45.13 percent of the unemployed population does not take care of the household and social activities.This category includes not attending school and attending school.Meanwhile, 7.11 older adults only take care of social activities.This illustrates that during COVID-19, both employed and unemployed people have various activities in their lives.
The high percentage of the population not taking care of social activities (63.94 percent), 57.87 percent of the employed population, and 68.64 percent of the unemployed population without taking care of social activities explains how the pandemic has caused many worries around social activity with others.One of the government's social and physical distancing policies to avoid the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of its outbreak (early 2020) was to reduce citizens' interaction with each other, aside from the worries about disease transmission.It is in line with the result of research from (Alghamdi, 2021;Brooks et al., 2021;Pongutta et al., 2021)  in this study.Generally, the figures' indexes explain that the larger size of a city measured by the amount of population, the higher the quality of life.However, on more precise examination, this condition did not occur.It can be seen in some cities, such as South Tangerang City and Batam City, smaller than Palembang City.Likewise, Bogor City, Pekanbaru, Malang, and Denpasar are smaller than Central Jakarta, but they have a higher quality of life index.
The top five cities with the highest quality of life index are Surabaya (East Java Province), Depok and Bandung (West Java Province), West Jakarta, and  South Jakarta (Special Region of Jakarta).All of these cities are located on the Java Island, as the center of economic growth in Indonesia (Figure 4).This is in line with the thought of (Murgaš, 2016), who stated that the quality of life from the objective dimension is the quality of place, where many geographers associate the quality of life with a spatial dimension.The result of his research also revealed that quality of place determines the quality of life.The Main Map of urban quality of life in Indonesia is presented here.
One of the characteristics of a good place in a region is the attraction of the population to locate and live there.The attractiveness can be induced by many factors, both economic and non-economic.Many researchers reveal that socioeconomic factors, distance, and even more noticeably, specific factors such as lifestyle and amenities are the determinants of migration (Qi et al., 2021).The rapid economic growth and industrialization draw in migration (Li et al., 2014).Significant economic development becomes an attractive hope to achieve a better life by getting a better job.As the economic growth center of Indonesia, Java Island is believed to provide a good quality of life for urban citizens.
Meanwhile, the bottom five cities with the lowest quality of life are Sabang City, Tual, Tidore Islands, Pariaman and Sungai Penuh (Figure 5).The three lowest cities are located on small islands at the western and eastern ends of Indonesia.Similar to the cities studied earlier, the geography of a city also determines the quality of life.In the remote location of a city, the quality of life is also relatively low.The more strategic location of a city from a geographical point of view is cities located at the region of the center of economic growth, the better the quality of life.
The Quality of Life (QoL) Index of Indonesian cities is biased to the right (positive skewness).It indicates that the dominant cities in Indonesia have a lower Quality of Life index.The results reveal that the arithmetic or geometric mean is greater than the median and mode.It is also suggested by the skewness gradient index being more than zero (Sk = 1.158), indicating that only a few cities have a high quality of life index (Table 2).
The standard deviation (Guo et al., 2022) as a measure of stratified heterogeneity is approximately 40.16, indicating a significant difference in the distribution of quality of life between cities in Indonesia.It also demonstrates an enormous gap in the quality of life among Indonesian cities by a deviation of 151.71 points.About 73.1 percent of cities have a quality-of-life index in the first and second (low) levels of the five identified levels, and 56.72 percent have a quality-of-life index below the average.
As explained above, remote areas are not good and are not attractive places for residents to improve their quality of life.Good access becomes something that determines it.Good infrastructure and various economic and social facilities are factors that determine those choices.This is in line with the study conducted by (Faka, 2020) which stated that better housing, access to public services, infrastructure, and the natural environment has good quality of life, while remote communities have scored at the lowest level.(Helburn, 1982) also stated that the characteristics of the place contribute to the quality of life.
Meanwhile, in terms of purchasing power, there are still very few residents who have high purchasing power.This is shown by only 14.06 percent of the population who state that non-food expenditure is purchased higher than food expenditure.This proportion matches up with Engel's law which states that people with low income have a high proportion of spending on food (Kaus, 2013;Perthel, 1975).However, several studies state that spending on food is not only determined by income but also by family size (Chakrabarty & Hildenbrand, 2011).Geographical location can also determine the proportion of food expenditure due to the formation of urban agglomerations and structural changes.This occurs due to the reallocation of labor from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector (Petty's Law) (Murata, 2008).Only 12.78 percent of families spend more on food.While the rest are unable to determine which one is greater because their expenses are always uncertain or changeable.This also illustrates that the economic capacity of the population of cities in Indonesia is still in the middle group (Table 3).
Based on the statistic shown above, only 37.3 percent of cities have residents who spend more on non-food than on food.This indicates that Indonesian cities have experienced the conditions described by (Murata, 2008), where structural changes have resulted in a shift in spending on food priorities to non-food.

Macroeconomic variables
On a micro basis, several economic and social dimensions in this analysis contribute to the quality of life in urban areas.These are generally included in the main subjective and objective dimensions.Health, work, education, social relations, personal security, happiness, and purchasing power are the micro dimensions that contribute (questions related to the dimensions are attached).
The macroeconomic variables considered in the analysis of Indonesia's urban quality of life are assumed to affect the quality of life.These aspects include household consumption expenditure per capita, population density, economic growth, and location.The results of the regression on macroeconomic variables are as shown in Table 4.
The result of regression describes that all variables economic and geographical factors have positive signs and are significant statistically.Urban population density (LPopDens), and household consumption expenditure per capita (LHCECap) have positive signs and significance at the level of 0.01.While the location (Loc) and Economic growth (EG) are significant at the level of 0.05 and shows positive signs.These facts explain that the high urban population density can improve urban quality.It means the high density as a description of high population concentration also describes the high level of economic activities in a city.The higher the economic activities, the higher the community activities in various economic and social dimensions as an indicator of the quality of life.This condition also reflects that people in Indonesia prefer to live in a denser city because it can provide a better quality of life through the availability of urban facilities.Geographical population concentration, which encourages economic concentration (agglomeration), can provide benefits for the community.The economic concentration creates market size (Clipa et al., 2012), which can increase efficiency (welfare) due to the labor pool.In addition, economic concentration can also provide some spillovers, such as information spillover, technology spillover, and knowledge spillover (O'Sullivan, 2012).These spillovers can accelerate improvements to efficiency.The high concentration also generates social relations.High economic concentration is also an overview of the development of social institutions in which various things interact (Jamal, 2017).
Thus, the household consumption expenditure per capita is in line with the concentration of the urban economy.The higher the concentration of economic activities, the more advanced a city is.It leads to higher per capita household consumption expenditures.The increase in consumption expenditure means an increase in well-being.An increase in consumption expenditure comes about from demand increasing or caused by the demonstration effect.City as a center of economic concentration provides many and varied goods or services.All goods or services provided are not only what communities need (demand side), but also goods are produced due to industrial innovation (supply side), which consumer do not necessarily need at the time.Apart from both, as long as the population feels their needs are met from primary to tertiary needs, they feel better.
In line with economic concentration, economic growth is an indicator of the economy of a city.Economic growth illustrates the existence of economic development, and at the same time, an increase in employment for the population.Thus, economic growth is the hope for a city to improve its urban quality of life.Positive signs and significant results verified that the city's economic growth is a well-off indicator to improve Indonesia's urban quality of life.The research conducted by (Wu & Li, 2017) also verified that economic growth and social policies are important factors for improving the quality of life or wellbeing.
As explained above, the city's location can, at least, explain the development of the urban quality of life.The result of this regression also shows a positive relationship between location and quality of life and is significant at levels of 10 percent.The more a city is located in the center of economic growth, the more there is a tendency for the citizens' quality of life to be better.This is in line with the two conditions above, the more aggressive the urban economy, the better the quality of life.
In this case, it clarifies that isolated or remote cities and islands have lower quality of life.Furthermore, the policy of growth centers in these cities will encourage a movement in population (migration) to cities providing jobs (people-to-jobs approaches), thereby encouraging a more even distribution of population geographically.According to research (Wang & Conesa, 2022), population migration to cities can boost economic growth in China.Rapid aging, on the other hand, leads to a slowdown in economic growth.
As shown in Figures 2 and 3, cities with a low quality of life are those located in remote areas or small and relatively isolated islands, as well others that are not the main city of a province.It tends to be located far from the main city as a regional growth center.It can also be shown that the geographic location of a city has a strategic value related to the quality of life of its residents.The more isolated a city is, the lower the quality-of-life value is compared to cities that are close to the center of economic growth.(Rentfrow, 2018) stated that choosing a place to live is vital for everyone's well-being.The areas that can satisfy all needs and allow people to create closer communities.

Conclusion
In order to measure the urban quality of life, the researchers of this study categorized the study into subjective and objective dimensions as suggested by many researchers.In this study, the dimension is detailed using the dimension variables of health, education, work, and life balance, social relation, happiness, personal security, and purchasing power that refers to the OECD suggestion.Furthermore, the study uses indicators approaches based on the data availability.
The geographic area is one of the determining factors for the urban quality of life, besides per capita household consumption expenditure, economic growth, and population densities.This indicates that the bigger a city, the more well-being it provides for the residents.In addition, the cities located in the region of economic growth centers have great opportunities to improve the quality of life of urban citizens.
For the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic (while the survey was conducted), many city residents reduced their involvement in social activities due to concerns about the COVID-19 outbreak.They persisted in improving the quality of life through the performances of quality-of-life indicators.However, it was revealed that more than fifty percent of cities had a quality-of-life index below the average index value.The pandemic has caused a reduction in the direct social interaction.People tend to reduce direct activities outside the home, however, social relations still occur, such as mobile or internet use.The reduction in social activity directly contributes to the economic activity.All economic sectors stagnate due to the absence of the economic actvitiy.The research results have proven that as stated by (Khoirunurrofik et al., 2022) that the more urban a city is, the more impacted it will be from a pandemic which will also impact on the quality of life and the economy of city residents.
The study shows the disparities in the quality of life among cities in Indonesia, between the bigger cities and the smaller cities, the mainland cities with the island cities, and the cities around the growth center with the cities outside.The government must generate regulations for remote cities to enable them to become special growth centers.In this case, it shows that isolated or remote cities and islands have a poor quality of life.Special treatment, particularly for specific industries and transportation policies, must be an important priority for the government.
The limitations of this study necessitate several of recommendations for future research, including aspects of distance and demographic characteristics.

Software
ArcGIS 10.8 were constructed in this study to draw the geographical maps.Regression Analysis in this study used the SPSS 22. Microsoft Excel 2019 has also been used in computing Quality of Life indexes and illustrate the 3D Map to add the video to show further the difference in the urban quality of life in Indonesia.

Open Scholarship
This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Data.The data are openly accessible at https:// doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/BNW86 .

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Quality of Life (QoL) indexes in Indonesia (Source: Numbeo, 2020) . Objective indicators are monetary indicators, such as income, expenditure, clothing, and transportation costs.In comparison, subjective indicators are non-monetary indicators such as community environment.However, (Das, 2008) distinguishes both indicators: objective indicators are measures based on external factors to an individual while subjective indicators are based on psychological responses, such as job satisfaction and happiness.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. The urban Quality of Life index in Indonesia (Source: The results of research).

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Map of urban Quality of Life in Indonesia (Source: The results of research).

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Top five cities of quality of life in Indonesia (Source: The results of research).

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Bottom five cities of quality of life in Indonesia (Source: The results of research).

Table 1 .
which concluded COVID-19 pandemic affected the social aspect and limited social interaction.4.2.The quality of life and macroeconomic variables4.2.1.The quality of lifeFigures 2 and 3 illustrate the quality-of-life index of cities in Indonesia, including all variable dimensions Activities arrangement (percent of respondents).

Table 3 .
Spending on non food and food.

Table 4 .
Result of regression.