Valuing Community Attributes in Rural Counties in West Virginia: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

Maribel Mojica (), Tesfa Gebremedhin () and Peter Schaeffer
Additional contact information
Maribel Mojica: Division of Resource Management, West Virginia University
Tesfa Gebremedhin: Division of Resource Management, West Virginia University

Working Papers from Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University

Abstract: The study used Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to examine community attributes of rural counties in West Virginia using variables determining quality of life. This analysis was done to understand the value of the social and economic characteristics associated with different communities as migration patterns in the US are mostly attributed to community characteristics determining the residents’ valuation of the quality of life in an area. County level data was used to identify counties that are inefficient, measured in terms of socioeconomic factors. The data is composed of output variables representing desirable community attributes and input variables representing the undesirable characteristics. Analysis was done by using Data Envelopment Analysis to calculate efficiency scores among rural counties in the State as quantitative measures of the efficient production of quality of life within communities. The results show that the majority of the rural counties in the State lie on the efficiency frontier, while others are classified to be inefficient. The research findings are of interest to policy makers as indicators of community performance which can be used for evaluating counties in terms of quality of life.

Keywords: data envelopment analysis; migration; quality of life; regional development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O1 O2 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2008-03-27
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/rri_pubs/76/ (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rri:wpaper:2008wp03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Randall Jackson ().