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Social Indicators Research

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01.01.2013

City Life: Rankings (Livability) Versus Perceptions (Satisfaction)

verfasst von: Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn

Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research | Ausgabe 2/2013

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Abstract

I investigate the relationship between the popular Mercer city ranking (livability) and survey data (satisfactions). Livability aims to capture objective quality of life such as infrastructure. Survey items capture subjective quality of life such as satisfaction with city. The relationship between objective measures of quality of life and subjective measures is weak (correlation of about 0.4). Trust is highly correlated with both, objective livability (0.8) and subjective satisfaction with city (0.65). I postulate to pay more attention to subjective indicators of quality of life. After all, what matters is what we perceive, not what is out there.

Vorheriger Artikel Contentment and Affect in the Estimation of Happiness

Nächster Artikel Worker Satisfaction Following Employment Restructuring: Effects of Nonstandard Workers and Downsizing on Job Satisfaction in Taiwan

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“The Economist and Forbes base their rankings primarily on data from the Mercer consulting company”(http://www.livablecities.org/blog/value-rankings-and-meaning-livability.). Kotkin (2011) claims that the Economist ranking is “remarkably similar” to Mercer.

In fact, we have the livability ratings because they are produced for businesses. Companies producing livability lists like Mercer sell them to businesses.

There are more ratings here: http://www.mercer.com/press-releases/quality-of-living-report-2010#City_Ranking_Table.

Curiosity, openness and tolerance contribute to the key ingredient of well-being (social capital). Yet, on the other hand, diversity hinders social capital (Putnam 2007).

There were at least two attempts to answer this question: Schneider (2005) and Diener and Suh (1997). These researchers, however used different data and focused on different geographical locations. I focus on Europe and use new data.

There is a systematic difference between what we think to influence our quality of life and what actually does. For a further discussion of the difference between expected and experienced utility see (Kahneman and Sarin (1997); Schkade and Kahneman (1998); Kahneman (2000); Kahneman and Krueger (2006).

http://www.livablecities.org/blog/value-rankings-and-meaning-livability.

For a further discussion see Diener and Suh (1997) and Schneider (2005).

And so is artificial the popular Human Development Index (HDI), because it is a weighted average of income, life expectancy and education. HDI is measuring objective qualities, but in a normative way. Experts assign weights to each component based on their normative ideals.

Mercer claims on its website (http://www.mercer.com/referencecontent.htm?idContent=1380465) that “Given that basic individual needs are quite general, it is fairly unlikely that the quality of living components listed by two different individuals will differ to any great extent; what is more likely is that certain criteria of quality of living will have greater weighting than others at a given moment or in certain situations.” I would say that most of the components will have different weighting, and some of them will be different. Another confusing statement from the same website says: “In fact, Quality of Life may involve a subjective assessment or opinion, whereas Mercer’s criteria are objective, neutral and unbiased.”

For instance, in Rennes a metro line was opened in 2002 and this explains why Rennes in 2004 has the highest share of satisfied residents with public transportation http://www.urbanaudit.org/UAPS%20leaflet.pdf. In later years ratings of public transportation in Rennes dropped.

There seems to be no documentation about synthetic index calculation and I was unable to obtain information from Eurostat. However, synthetic index is almost the same as proportion of respondents who agree (strongly and somewhat) to those who disagree (strongly and somewhat) with correlations of more than 0.95.

I obtained weights by contacting Mercer. Mercer data can be found at: http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/livable_cities_worldwide.html. There are indices for 2006 and 2007 and they correlate at 0.99, and I just use a values for 2006. A full list of 39 factors is in the "Appendix". Additional information is available here: http://www.citymayors.com/features/quality_survey.html#Anchor-Europe-11481.

http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/studies/pdf/urban/survey2009_en.pdf.

Cummins (2000) further argues that the poorer the objective conditions the higher the correlation between the objective and subjective measures. Unfortunately, I cannot test this proposition here because European cities have good objective quality of life. But good objective quality of life may explain low correlation with subjective measures per Cummins (2000).

Again, I will use a synthetic index.

Again, i use survey means over 2004, 2006 and 2009, but results are similar if I just use 2006—only correlations with Mercer index are slightly higher by .05 to 0.1— it is expected because Mercer index comes covers 2006.

Florida (2008) produced some rankings for American cities for singles, professionals, families with children, empty-nesters, and retirees.

Urban Audit also asked about satisfaction with hospitals and results were similar—correlation of 0.73.

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Cummins, R. (2000). Objective and subjective auality of life: An interactive model. Social Indicators Research, 52, 55–72.CrossRef

Diener, E., & Suh, E. (1997). Measuring quality of life: Economic, social, and subjective indicators. Social indicators research 40, 189–216.CrossRef

Economist. (2011a). Liveable cities challenges and opportunities for policymakers. Economist Intelligence Unit.

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Titel: City Life: Rankings (Livability) Versus Perceptions (Satisfaction)
verfasst von: Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn
Publikationsdatum: 01.01.2013
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research / Ausgabe 2/2013
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-011-9939-x

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