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Assessing the quality of life in French municipalities: a multidimensional approach

  • S.I. : MCDM 2017
  • Published:
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Abstract

Quality of life and well-being is a topic of major importance for public policy making and urban planning decisions. However, these concepts entail complex multiple socio-economic aspects, and are ill-defined. Quantitative assessments of quality of life based on composite indicators have become quite popular in academic research and practice. This study presents the application of an approach that combines ideas from multiple criteria decision making and efficiency analysis to the assessment of quality of life at the municipality level. A dataset involving French municipalities in 2012 is used for the analysis based on a rich set of key performance indicators that cover different aspects of quality of life conditions for citizens. The relationship of quality of life performance with the financial strength of the municipalities is also explored.

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Notes

  1. The pessimistic version of model (1) is expressed as \( I_{0*} = \mathop {\hbox{min} }\limits_{{{\mathbf{w}}_{0} \in {\mathcal{W}}}} \frac{{{\mathbf{x}}_{0} {\mathbf{w}}_{0} }}{{\mathop {\hbox{max} }\limits_{i \in A} {\mathbf{x}}_{i} {\mathbf{w}}_{0} }} \). Entani et al. (2002) provided an algorithm to derive the optimal solution explicitly, but this works only when there are no restrictions about the weights (i.e., the weights are simply assumed non-negative).

  2. National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), Public Equipment database (BPE), Public Finances General Directorate (DGFiP), National Office for Water and Aquatic Environments (ONEMA), Central Directorate of the Judiciary Police (DCPJ) and the National Observatory on Delinquency (ONDRP).

  3. The Kendall’s W coefficient of concordance between the mean scores across the three specifications for the weight restrictions, was 0.986 for municipalities with population at least 500, versus 0.979 for the optimistic results and 0.971 for the pessimistic ones.

  4. The notion of urban unity is based both on building continuity and the number of inhabitants. One calls an urban unit a municipality or a set of municipalities with a continuous building area (no break of more than 200 m between two buildings), which has at least 2000 inhabitants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Production Engineering and Management, Financial Engineering Laboratory, Technical University of Crete, University Campus, 73100, Chania, Greece

    Michalis Doumpos & Constantin Zopounidis

  2. Audencia Business School, Institute of Finance, 8 route de la Jonelière, 44312, Nantes, France

    Alexis Guyot, Emilios Galariotis & Constantin Zopounidis

Authors
  1. Michalis Doumpos
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  2. Alexis Guyot
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  3. Emilios Galariotis
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  4. Constantin Zopounidis
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Correspondence to Michalis Doumpos.

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Doumpos, M., Guyot, A., Galariotis, E. et al. Assessing the quality of life in French municipalities: a multidimensional approach. Ann Oper Res 293, 789–808 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-018-3068-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-018-3068-8

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