DEA-Like Model and Common Weights Approach for the Construction of a Subjective Community Well-Being Indicator

A growing literature assesses the quality of life and well-being in geographically and/or politically divided areas. The paper proposes a new subjective well being (SWB) indicator based on residents’ satisfaction with environment and community, personal life and leisure activities. Our approach is a novel construction and new application of the well-being index, specifically, a DEA-like model with common weights under the benefit of the doubt (BoD) approach. This approach is very interesting in the SWB framework, allowing us to differentiate efficient individuals or estimate the relative importance of each domain in the SWB indicator. The results state that Personal life is the domain that most profoundly affects SWB index; it also differs in groups of individuals and geographic spaces. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013