Exploring environmental urban policies: a methodological proposal to build a composite indicator measuring urban environmental virtuosity

Salvatore Ercolano and Oriana Romano ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Synthesizing the complex phenomenon of “environment” into a single indicator could leads to a loss of information, which inhibit his use as a reference for the resolution of several issues such as, for example, the allocation of resources. On the other hand it allows to represent the overall environmental performance of cities and to highlight relationships between different sectors. We consider “process oriented” variables instead of aggregated and “outcome oriented” ones, generally used to measure environmental sustainability strictu sensu. In this sense we refers specifically to the concept of “environmental virtuosity”, that allows to rank statistical units (i.e. Italian main municipalities), considering their policy efforts for improving urban environmental quality. Generally an indicator of environmental quality should combine partial information to summarize the main subject. This paper proposes to measure urban environmental virtuosity by multivariate analysis, following OECD (2008) procedure. This methodology will try to overcome the main methodological issues in building up indicators, consisting in the choice of weights and in the common practice of simply adding sub-indicators.

Keywords: Composite indicators; multivariate analysis; environmental policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q5 R38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-01-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-ure
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