How do autonomy and inquisitiveness play roles in sustainable development? Implications from matrilineal Island Palau

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) have become common missions for humanity all over the world. However, little is known about what types of people or societies are likely to achieve SDGs or to steadily follow the paths. This research considers that generativity and wellbeing shall be necessary and salient indicators people in societies must enhance for achieving SDGs, hypothesizing that people with high autonomy (being independent & resisting social pressure) and inquisitiveness (adaptability to new social and/or environmental changes) tend to be generative and happy. To empirically examine the hypothesis, we analyze people’s generativity and wellbeing as essential elements of SDGs and statistically characterize them in relation to autonomy and inquisitiveness with the data from questionnaire surveys and experiments of 413 residents in matrilineal Island Palau. We choose Palau as the field, because rapid social and environmental changes are ongoing from traditional to modern societies and a wide variation of people is expected to be observed compared to any field in other nations, even with small sample size. Two main results are obtained. First, the analysis identifies the importance of inquisitiveness in that people with high inquisitiveness tend to be generative. Second, people’s wellbeing is high as they are generative, autonomous and inquisitive, demonstrating two influential roles of inquisitiveness on happiness as direct and indirect determinants through a mediator of generativity. Overall, the results suggest that autonomy and inquisitiveness contribute to people’s generativity and wellbeing even in tradition-oriented societies, such as Palau, and their improvements are considered specific paths for materializing SDGs.