The SOCQUIT project (SOcial Capital, QUality of life and Information Technology) is will support policy and decision makers providing insight into effects of information and communication services on social capital and quality of life. The main goal of SOCQUIT is to develop a modelling tool that will bring to light the interaction between social capital, quality of life and information technology.

This document supports that goal by reviewing relevant material and providing the building blocks for the later modelling work. In this document, we examine the policy background and the literature associated with social capital and quality of life. In addition, we develop the preliminary outline of the model that forms the core of the decision making tool and examine the data that will allow its validation. Thus, this document is, in a sense, a working document produced by the SOCQUIT project. It has the intention of reviewing several areas of research so as to inform the later work of the SOCQUIT project.

The specific building blocks examined here include

1) the use of quality of life (QoL) and social capital in European policy,
2) a literature review and an analysis of the way in which these two concepts have developed,
3) an examination of how Information and communication technologies (ICTs) play into our consideration of QoL and social capital,
4) the preliminary development of a conceptual framework that will guide the development of the modelling tool in later stages of the SOCQUIT project and finally,
5) the review of data that addresses these issues.

Given these wide-ranging goals the reader can expect to be taken on a trip into distinct but varied territory. The goal of the document is to provide the project group and any interested reader with the insight into these various areas that will ultimately be brought together in later stages of the project. Thus, this document contains input material for the project from which the final SOCQUIT product will be developed.

Quality of life is more and more considered as the ultimate aim of the information society. However, the consistent belief that ICT will improve quality of life needs to be more nuanced. The impact of ICT could be very complex and diverse for different people in different circumstances. Furthermore the effects on quality of life may often not be verifiable because people interpret or experience quality of life in many different ways. As quality of life is a very imprecise concept it is not that useful as a basis for policy and strategy.

Although ICT has the potential to contribute to people’s well being in several ways, the positive effects are not always equally distributed. Not everybody is able to exploit the potential of ICT just as good. In general the privileged benefit more from ICT than the deprived even where the latter have equal access. To benefit from ICT people should of course have access and skills, but more important it turns out that people need the right social environment. Social capital emerges as an essential resource in the information society.

SOCQUIT concludes that one of the biggest opportunities for ICTs to increase quality of life is through their impact on citizens’ social life. As ICT is developing more and more into the direction of a social network and communication technology, it helps building and maintaining social contacts and increases social wellbeing. Subsequently ICT also enables people to benefit from their social resources in order to improve their well-being in other ways (the principle of social capital). Furthermore social networks are very important in the development of applications and uses of ICT. ICT offers tool by which people can interact and define their own (often unanticipated) uses and applications. A tendency is seen in which social applications are becoming more and more key in the information society. The notion arises that the key characteristic of ICT is that it connects people, instead of discloses information. We are emerging from an information to a (social) network or communication society.