Exploring competitiveness and wellbeing in Italy by spatial principal component analysis

It is not easy to define the concept of well-being: it concerns a social phenomenon with very different semantic and interpretative orientations that have their roots in various disciplines, such as Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Urban Planning and others. A concept that embraces all aspects of living can therefore only be part of a theoretical model built ad hoc. To begin to evaluate the problems that led to the construction of the model used in this work, we want to briefly recall the excursus that over time has led to the different formulations of an evolving concept: quality of life. Some methodological aspects related to principal component analysis for spatial data and an application to the the data of BES at local level NUTS 3 will be presented