Top

Social Indicators Research

Published in:

27-10-2016

The Italian Regional Well-Being in a Multi-expert Non-additive Perspective

Authors: Giovanni Bertin, Ludovico Carrino, Silvio Giove

Published in: Social Indicators Research | Issue 1/2018

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

This paper designs a multidimensional index of well-being for 20 Italian regions, based on a set of 41 indicators organized in an original hierarchical structure, a decision-tree whose four main pillars are Economy, Society, Environment and Health. Our novel approach combines the objective dimension of the evaluation (a comprehensive set of statistical indicators) within a flexible non-additive aggregation model (the Choquet integral) characterized with the preferences of informed Italian stakeholders. Adopting the Choquet integral allows us to overcome the well-known limitations embedded in the linear models, by assigning a weight (capacity) to any coalitions of dimensions, and by allowing a different degree of substitutability within each decision node in the tree. The weights and the parameters for the aggregation are elicited through a computer-based nominal group technique, a method which reduces the occurrences of drastically dissenting valuations and the potential expert-selection bias. Our results show that experts’ perception of synergies and redundancies is quite heterogeneous between levels and nodes in the tree. Moreover, well-being measures are much influenced by the degree of substitutability embedded in the experts’ preferences. Overall, the Italian picture looks more heterogeneous when analysed through the Choquet integral, with respect to a linear model.

previous article A Data-Driven Approach to Construct Survey-Based Indicators by Means of Evolutionary Algorithms

next article Time in the Development of Indicators on Sustainable Wellbeing: A Local Experiment in Developing Alternative Indicators

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Available only for authorised users

Through this analysis, we do not aim at providing efficiency index for each Well-being pillar, which would require a much more structured set of information. We, rather, limit ourselves at evaluations of performances, as suggested by Lefebvre et al. (2010).

More indices have been published between 2001 and 2010, than between 1960 and 2000, altogether (Kaul 2013).

Further example of such analyses in Italy are the Quality of Life index by the financial newspapers Il Sole 24 Ore (http://www.ilsole24ore.com/speciali/qvita_2013/home.shtml) and Italia Oggi, by the Sblianciamoci! Group (http://www.sbilanciamoci.org/tag/quars/) and by UnionCamere Veneto (http://www.oltreilpil.it/).

Numerous theoretical and empirical attempts have been made, from governments to international institutions, to build synthetic Well-being indicators that would go "beyond GDP" at national, regional or community levels (UNDP (2014) Anand and Sen (1994) European Commission (2009) UNDP (2010) Alkire and Santos (2010) OECD (2013) OECD (2014)). In Italy, two reports were recently published, on Sustainable and Fair Well-being, by the National Institute of Statistics and the National Council of Economy and Labour (ISTAT and CNEL (2014)), which do not include the creation of a synthetic indicator. Further example of such analyses in Italy are the Quality of Life index by the financial newspapers Il Sole 24 Ore (http://www.ilsole24ore.com/speciali/qvita_2013/home.shtml) and Italia Oggi, by the Sblianciamoci! Group (http://www.sbilanciamoci.org/tag/quars/) and by UnionCamere Veneto (http://www.oltreilpil.it/).

This hypothesis could be relaxed by imposing a non-linear shape to the normalization function, e.g., convex, concave or s-shaped (Chiappero-Martinetti and von Jacobi (2012); Meyer and Ponthière (2011)). The results of this paper are not affected by such modifications.

E.g., in the data-driven normalization, a variable with transformed-value equal to “0” just implies it being “the last one”, or “the worst one” among the observed, which does not necessarily corresponds to an undesirable condition of Well-being.

As an example, the Italian law 152/2006 establishes that 65% of total wastes should be “recycling waste”: this is a “desirable” target, which we will use in the min–max normalization as the “max” threshold. A region whose recycling share is above 65 will get a normalized value of 100, regardless of its actual recycling-share.

In principle, “desirable” and “undesirable” target could be set for each of the 41 indicators involved in our analysis, but this would require a considerable effort in gathering and questioning experts in each of the considered domains.

In this paper we use the notation from Grabisch et al. (2008).

Details on Experts’ selections, as well as on the elicitation framework adopted to make them interact, is covered in Sect. 5.

We use the \( \left[ {0,1} \right] \) scale—with the usual meaning- both for \( \left[ {x_{1} \left( j \right), \ldots ,x_{n} \left( j \right)} \right] \) and for the answer \( y\left( j \right) \).

As for any expert sample, issues could be raised on our group’s capability of ensuring all values of efficiency, equity and democracy in the elicitation process. As Kim et al. (2015) as pointed out, there is no elicitation method that can ensure all the aforementioned problems. Being concerned with the democratic representativeness, one could argue that greater citizen participation were required; nevertheless, such strategy would likely cause loss of efficiency and quality of the elicitation.

The average of multiple Choquet measures is still a Choquet measure, as discussed in Sect. 4. Concerns have been expressed in the literature regarding the possibility of averaging experts’ preferences, due to the potential existence of drastically dissenting evaluations, which would require statistical methods to generate ex-post consensus and mitigate panel-selection bias (Pinar et al. (2014)). We prevented such concerns ex-ante, since Experts’ preferences were elicited through the consensus-method NGT. Hence the choice of averaging preferences in steps (4) and (5).

The coefficient of variation is a computed as: Standard deviation of values/Average value.

Although there is no direct economic meaning to the index values in absolute terms, recall that, in order to get a Well-being index of one, a region would need to score the maximum value in every normalized indicator in the tree (i.e., exhibiting performances that are in-line with the best practice or best-benchmarks in Europe). Conversely, a Well-being index close to zero conveys a dashboard of indicators with all performance close to zero (i.e., exhibiting performances that are in-line with the worst practice or worst-benchmarks in Europe), or a dashboard with performance close to zero in those indicators regarded as necessary and most-important by the experts.

According to the Italian Law 381, 1991, these are cooperatives targeting the labour-market participation of disadvantaged individuals.

We only report interactions between couples of dimensions, since our Choquet Integral is 2-additive, thus assuming that interactions among triples, quadruples, etc., are negligible.

Alkire, S., & Santos, M. E. (2010). Acute multidimensional poverty: A new index for developing countries (No. HDRP-2010-11). Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Anand, S., & Sen, A. (1994). Human development index: methodology and measurement. Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Bertin, G. (2011). Con-sensus method: Ricerca sociale e costruzione di senso (Vol. 1). Milan: FeancoAngeli.

Boarini, R., & D’Ercole, M. M. (2013). Going beyond GDP: An OECD Perspective. Fiscal Studies, 34(3), 289–314. doi:10.1111/j.1475-5890.2013.12007.x.CrossRef

Bourguignon, F., & Chakravarty, S. R. (2003). The measurement of multidimensional poverty. The Journal of Economic Inequality, 1(1), 25–49.CrossRef

Cherchye, L., Knox Lovell, C. A., Moesen, W., & Van Puyenbroeck, T. (2007a). One market, one number? A composite indicator assessment of EU internal market dynamics. European Economic Review, 51(3), 749–779. doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2006.03.011.CrossRef

Cherchye, L., Moesen, W., Rogge, N., & Van Puyenbroeck, T. (2007b). An introduction to ‘benefit of the doubt’composite indicators. Social Indicators Research, 82(1), 111–145.CrossRef

Chiappero-Martinetti, E., & von Jacobi, N. (2012). Light and shade of multidimensional indexes: How methodological choices impact on empirical results. In: Maggino, F., & Nuvolati, G (Eds.), Quality of life in Italy: Research and Reflections, Social Indicators Research Series, vol. 48 (pp. 69–103). New York and London: Springer.

Chowdhury, S., & Squire, L. (2006). Setting weights for aggregate indices: An application to the commitment to development index and human development index. Journal of Development Studies, 42(5), 761–771.CrossRef

Daly, H. E., Cobb, J. B., & Cobb, C. W. (1994). For the common good: Redirecting the economy toward community, the environment, and a sustainable future (Vol. 73). Boston: Beacon Press.

Dasgupta, P. (2001). Human well-being and the natural environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRef

Decancq, K., & Lugo, M. A. (2013). Weights in multidimensional indices of wellbeing: An overview. Econometric Reviews, 32(1), 7–34.CrossRef

Decancq, K., & Schokkaert, E. (2016). Beyond GDP: Using equivalent incomes to measure well-being in Europe. Social indicators research, 126(1), 21–55.CrossRef

Delbecq, A. L., Van de Ven, A. H., & Gustafson, D. H. (1975). Group techniques for program planning: A guide to nominal group and Delphi processes. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman.

Despic, O., & Simonovic, S. P. (2000). Aggregation operators for soft decision making in water resources. Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 115(1), 11–33. doi:10.1016/S0165-0114(99)00030-5.CrossRef

Donati, P. (2014). Social capital and associative democracy: a relational perspective. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 44(1), 24–45.CrossRef

European Commission. (2009). GDP and beyond: measuring progress in a changing world. COM (2009), 433.

Giovannini, E., Nardo, M., Saisana, M., Saltelli, A., Tarantola, A., & Hoffman, A. (2008). Handbook on constructing composite indicators: Methodology and user guide. OECD publishing.

Grabisch, M. (1996). The application of fuzzy integrals in multicriteria decision making. European Journal of Operational Research, 89(3), 445–456. doi:10.1016/0377-2217(95)00176-X.CrossRef

Grabisch, M. (1997). K-order additive discrete fuzzy measures and their representation. Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 92(2), 167–189.CrossRef

Grabisch, M. (2009). Aggregation functions (Vol. 127). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef

Grabisch, M., Kojadinovic, I., & Meyer, P. (2008). A review of methods for capacity identification in Choquet integral based multi-attribute utility theory: Applications of the Kappalab R package. European Journal of Operational Research, 186(2), 766–785.CrossRef

Grabisch, M., & Labreuche, C. (2010). A decade of application of the Choquet and Sugeno integrals in multi-criteria decision aid. Annals of Operations Research, 175(1), 247–286.CrossRef

Harvey, N., & Holmes, C. A. (2012). Nominal group technique: An effective method for obtaining group consensus. International Journal of Nursing Practice, 18(2), 188–194. doi:10.1111/j.1440-172X.2012.02017.x.CrossRef

Hoskins, B., & Mascherini, M. (2009). Measuring Active citizenship through the development of a composite indicator. Social Indicators Research, 90(3), 459–488. doi:10.1007/s11205-008-9271-2.CrossRef

ISTAT, & CNEL. (2014). BES 2014: Il benessere equo e sostenibile in italia. Roma: Istituto nazionale di Statistica and Consiglio Nazionale dell’Economia e del Lavoro.

Ivaldi, E., Bonatti, G., & Soliani, R. (2015). The construction of a synthetic index comparing multidimensional well-being in the European Union. Social Indicators Research,. doi:10.1007/s11205-014-0855-8.

Kasparian, J., & Rolland, A. (2012). OECD’s ‘Better Life Index’: Can any country be well ranked? Journal of Applied Statistics, 39(10), 2223–2230.CrossRef

Kaul, I. (2013). Global public policy: A policy in the making. Paper presented at the first international conference on public policy (ICPP) 2013.

Kim, Y., Kee, Y., & Lee, S. (2015). An analysis of the relative importance of components in measuring community wellbeing: Perspectives of citizens, public officials, and experts. Social Indicators Research, 121(2), 345–369. doi:10.1007/s11205-014-0652-4.CrossRef

Klugman, J., Rodríguez, F., & Choi, H.-J. (2011). The HDI 2010: new controversies, old critiques. The Journal of Economic Inequality, 9(2), 249–288.CrossRef

Lefebvre, M., Coelli, T., & Pestieau, P. (2010). On the convergence of social protection performance in the European Union. CESifo Economic Studies, 56(2), 300–322.CrossRef

Maggino, F., & Zumbo, B. (2012). Measuring the quality of life and the construction of social indicators. In K. C. Land, A. C. Michalos, & M. J. Sirgy (Eds.), Handbook of social indicators and quality of life research (pp. 201–238). New York: Springer.CrossRef

Marichal, J.-L. (2004). Tolerant or intolerant character of interacting criteria in aggregation by the Choquet integral. European Journal of Operational Research, 155(3), 771–791.CrossRef

Mazziotta, M., & Pareto, A. (2015). On a generalized non-compensatory composite index for measuring socio-economic phenomena. Social Indicators Research,. doi:10.1007/s11205-015-0998-2.

Meyer, P., & Ponthière, G. (2011). Eliciting preferences on multiattribute societies with a Choquet integral. Computational Economics, 37(2), 133–168.CrossRef

Miranda, P., & Grabisch, M. (1999). Optimization issues for fuzzy measures. International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems, 07(06), 545–560. doi:10.1142/S0218488599000477.CrossRef

Murias, P., Novello, S., & Martinez, F. (2012). The regions of economic well-being in Italy and Spain. Regional Studies, 46(6), 793–816.CrossRef

Nussbaum, M., & Sen, A. (1993). The quality of life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRef

OECD. (2013). How’s life? 2013. Paris: OECD Publishing.CrossRef

OECD. (2014). How’s life in your region?. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Pinar, M., Cruciani, C., Giove, S., & Sostero, M. (2014). Constructing the FEEM sustainability index: A Choquet integral application. Ecological Indicators, 39, 189–202.CrossRef

Putnam, R. D. (2001). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Ravallion, M. (2011). On multidimensional indices of poverty. The Journal of Economic Inequality, 9(2), 235–248.CrossRef

Ravallion, M. (2012a). Mashup indices of development. World Bank Research Observer, 27(1), 1–32.CrossRef

Ravallion, M. (2012b). Troubling tradeoffs in the human development index. Journal of Development Economics, 99(2), 201–209.CrossRef

Rubin, G., De Wit, N., Meineche-Schmidt, V., Seifert, B., Hall, N., & Hungin, P. (2006). The diagnosis of IBS in primary care: consensus development using nominal group technique. Family Practice, 23(6), 687–692. doi:10.1093/fampra/cml050.CrossRef

Saisana, M., Saltelli, A., & Tarantola, S. (2005). Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis techniques as tools for the quality assessment of composite indicators. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 168(2), 307–323.CrossRef

Schrott, L., Gächter, M., & Theurl, E. (2012). Regional development in advanced countries: A within-country application of the Human Development Index for Austria. Working Papers in Economics and Statistics.

Sen, A., & Anand, S. (1997). Concepts of human development and poverty: A multidimensional perspective. Poverty and Human Development: Human Development Papers 1997.

Silva, R., & Ferreira-Lopes, A. (2014). A regional development index for Portugal. Social indicators research, 118(3), 1055–1085.CrossRef

Sirgy, M. J. (2011). Theoretical perspectives guiding QOL indicator projects. Social Indicators Research, 103(1), 1–22. doi:10.1007/s11205-010-9692-6.CrossRef

Stiglitz, J. E., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J.-P. (2009). Report by the commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress. http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr.

UNDP. (2010). HDR 2010: The real wealth of nations: Pathways to human development. Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

UNDP. (2014). HDR 2014: Sustaining human progress: reducing vulnerabilities and building resilience. Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Williams, D. (2007). The nominal group technique. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Title: The Italian Regional Well-Being in a Multi-expert Non-additive Perspective
Authors: Giovanni Bertin
Ludovico Carrino
Silvio Giove
Publication date: 27-10-2016
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Social Indicators Research / Issue 1/2018
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-016-1475-2

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Other articles of this Issue 1/2018

Stereotype and National Attachment in Hong Kong Chinese Context: A Moderated Mediation Model of Perceived Inter-group Relationship and Age

Time in the Development of Indicators on Sustainable Wellbeing: A Local Experiment in Developing Alternative Indicators

Resiliency and Adjustment in Times of Crisis, the Case of the Greek Economic Crisis from a Psycho-social and Community Perspective

Deciphering the Relationship Between Internal Migration and Regional Disparities in Tunisia

The National Wellbeing Index in the IsiXhosa Translation: Focus Group Discussions on How South Africans View the Quality of Their Society

Geocentric Behavior Dimension of the Organization’ Performance in the Context of Globalization