Methodological Issues in the Determination of the Quality of Life in Urban Areas

Stover, Mark; Leven, Charles L.

doi:10.1080/00420989220080671

Cited by 77 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…7 See Gyourko, Kahn and Tracy (1999) for a review of the literature on quality of life and amenity valuation. Stover and Leven (1992) also discuss a number of important issues related to estimating quality of life.…”

Section: Empirical Framework and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in quality of life estimates using rents and home values

Winters

2013

Ann Reg Sci

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Implicit values of amenities and the quality of life in an area can be measured by differences in "real wages" across areas, where real wages are computed as nominal wages adjusted for the cost of living. Computing cost of living differences involves several important issues, most important being how housing prices should be measured. Previous researchers typically have used some combination of rental payments and homeowner housing values. This paper examines differences in quality of life estimates for U.S. metropolitan areas using, alternatively, rents and housing values. We find that the two measures of quality of life are highly correlated. Valuebased estimates, however, are considerably more dispersed than rent-based estimates, likely because of the recent bubble in the housing market and because housing values often provide an imperfect measure of the present user cost of housing. Researchers should be cautious in using housing values to construct quality of life estimates. JEL Classification: R13, R21, R23

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Section: Empirical Framework and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in quality of life estimates using rents and home values

Winters

2013

Ann Reg Sci

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“…Quality of life depends on various objective conditions surrounding a person and subjective notions of how the person perceives the conditions (Dissart & Deller, 2000). According to these distinctive dimensions, QoL measurement research has been concerned with either the objective dimension (Blomquist, Berger, & Hoehn, 1988;Gyourko & Tracy, 1991;Roback, 1982;Stover & Leven, 1992) or the subjective dimension (Arthaud-day et al, 2005;Evans, 1994;Schneider, 1976;Sirgy, 2001;Verlet & Devos, 2009); these are called the objective indicators approach and the subjective indicators approaches, respectively (Cummins, 2000;Diener & Suh, 1997;Evans, 1994;Liao, 2009;McCrea et al, 2006;Schneider, 1976).…”

Section: Qol Issues and Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The instrumental variables included citizen evaluations of public services (see, Sirgy et al, 2000;Grezeskowiak et al, 2003;Sirgy et al, 2008), citizen evaluations of government performance (Coggburn & Schneider, 2003;Yang & Holzer, 2006), climate (Berger et al, 1987;Blomquist et al, 1988a;Gyourko & Tracy, 1991;Stover & Leven, 1992), economic conditions (Baldassare & Wilson, 1995;Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004;Easterlin, 1995;Frijters et al, 2004;Sirgy et al, 2008;Zinam, 1989), public safety (Grzeskowiak et al, 2003;Sirgy et al, 2000) and demographic characteristics (Baldassare & Wilson, 1995;Cramer, Torgersen, & Kringlen, 2004;Requena, 1995) such as average household size and racial homogeneity.…”

Section: Summary Of Proposed Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Community Quality of Life on Local Policy Decisions

Choi²

2014

Applied Research Quality Life

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There have been extensive debates on the factors that influence local policy decisions.Although many researchers have contributed to uncovering various influences such as political, economic, institutional, and demographic factors on local policy decisions, however, the concept of QoL rarely has used in extant literature. Local government spending is likely to be affected by citizen demands for achieving community well-being. Additionally, given that different policy functions variably affect local circumstances, the impact of QoL on local policy decisions will depend on the policy area. Hence, this study examined the relationship between QoL and local budgetary decisions based on Peterson's (1981) policy scheme of, three distinct policy arenas (developmental, allocational, and redistributive policy). In examining the relationship of QoL and city spending across policy functions, I also considered economic, political, institutional, and demographic factors, derived from various theoretical perspectives on local policy decisions.The relative influences of community QoL as well as other factors on local policy decisions were estimated by two-stage least squares regression analysis (2SLS) for developmental spending and by ordinary least squares (OLS) for allocational and redistributive spending. To measure community QoL, this study used 89,066 completed surveys from 167 communities in the United States for 2002-2008 are used. QoL appeared as a critical factor influencing local government expenditures in the three policy areas. The impact of QoL on local spending in the three areas differed depending on city income levels; city income levels then moderated local policy decisions.iii These findings suggest that local policy priorities adjusted in accordance with economic growth. Allocational policy functions also should be thought to be functions of cities geared toward giving them a competitive edge over other cities by meeting evolved citizen preferences for city amenities. These findings also point to distinct patterns of political activities in each policy arena. Given that community QoL reflects adjusted citizens' demands, I contend that community QoL can contribute to performance management by providing additional public information and a complementary performance indicator.iv

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“…For a typical city, the marginal benefits from improving these cultural goods are estimated to be in the $.85-$57.9 mil lion range for an additional theater and an additional zoo, respectively. Stover and Leven [48] examined the importance of functional form in estimating values for the quality of life in urban areas. Values of local amenities are assessed from the interaction between the labor and real estate markets.…”

Section: Intruductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They tried to identify the components of QOL and compared various geographical areas such as cities, states and nations by means of QOL indices that they developed [2,3,25,48,47] . In addition to the researchers, international organizations such as UNDP [51] developed its own measures for QOL.…”

Section: Intruductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An assessment of Urban Quality of Life by Using Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach (Case study: Comparative Study of Quality of Life in the North of Iran)

Lotfi¹,

Solaimani²

2009

J. of Social Sciences

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Problem Statement: Researches of quality of life are concentrated mainly on the urban nature in the recent years and the urban quality of life gained many attentions in empirical studies. The concept of urban quality of life is a multi-dimensional and complex issue. So, needless to say that this concept can be used in planning when there is an appropriate and reliable framework for measuring. Approach: The present study tried to create a framework on the base of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for objective measuring of urban quality of life and then it would be applied for a comparative study of two northern cities of Iran. Results: The results showed that using analytic hierarchy process model creates opportunity to involving the different groups' views of urban users with respect to their duties and functions in the stage of criteria weighting. Conclusion: This process not only provided an appropriate bed for objective measuring of urban quality of life but it facilitated the participation of urban authorities in the process of measuring and analyzing the urban quality. Also one of the advantages of the model was its high level of clarity and simplicity which could be perceived by all urban decision makers. Key words:Objective Urban Quality of Life (UQOL), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), measuring, comparative study INTRUDUCTIONResearchers from a variety of disciplines have studied Quality Of Life (QOL) since the 1930s [53] . They tried to identify the components of QOL and compared various geographical areas such as cities, states and nations by means of QOL indices that they developed [2,3,25,48,47] . In addition to the researchers, international organizations such as UNDP [51] developed its own measures for QOL. The desire to improve the quality of life in a particular place or for a particular person or group is an important focus of attention for planners [28] . An important reason for such an interest in QOL lies in the question of effective allocation of scarce resources [32] . In fact improvement of life quality in each society is one of the important aims of public policies. In recent years studies of life quality have mainly concentrated on the urban nature and urban quality of life gained much attention among the researchers. Clearly the increase of urban population and the increasing tendency for living in the city is one of the main incentives to expand an independent movement on life quality researches.The urban QOL concept gains more importance when it is considered that the world population is expected to reach somewhere between 7.6-9.4 billion [22] and the urban population is expected to reach 50% [47] in the beginning of the next century. The multi-dimensional character and evolutional nature of quality of life led to different interpretations which made the investigation difficult. So the recent research on the quality of life emphasis on the quality of measuring this concept in the cities. Clark and Kahn [7] used a two-stage hedonic approach to estimate willingness to pay fo...

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Methodological Issues in the Determination of the Quality of Life in Urban Areas

Cited by 77 publications

References 6 publications

Differences in quality of life estimates using rents and home values

Differences in quality of life estimates using rents and home values

The Effects of Community Quality of Life on Local Policy Decisions

An assessment of Urban Quality of Life by Using Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach (Case study: Comparative Study of Quality of Life in the North of Iran)

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