A new index of quality of life merging traditional and big data

Since 1990 Il Sole 24 Ore has provided a quality of life index for the Italian provinces. The index is obtained considering six dimensions, each of them defined through seven measured indicators. Indicators and dimensions refer to objective aspects of well-being. Recently, Iacus, Porro, Salini and Siletti have presented an index to measure the quality of life (SWBI) based on Twitter data, which therefore consider the perceived subjective well-being. This index evaluates separately eight dimensions. The aim of the paper is to merge the objective information from the Il Sole 24 index with those subjective from SWBI. First of all, we propose to estimate three macro dimensions representing respectively the At work, Personal and Social well-being; simultaneously, we estimate a new overall measure of well-being. To achieve these results, Partial Least Squares - Path Models are applied, in particular those for hierarchical constructs.