Assessing Liveability in Inner Areas: a spatial and metafrontier analysis on three provinces in central Italy

Abstract This paper examines the liveability of Inner Areas in three provinces of central Italy, addressing demographic and economic challenges as well as opportunities in heritage preservation. A Liveability Composite Index (LCI) is developed, aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG11). The methodology uses the Benefit-of-the-Doubt (BoD) approach to create composite indicators and employs Meta-frontier Analysis to compare liveability among groups of municipalities. A Spatial Lag Model (SLM) is applied to adjust for spatial autocorrelation, improving accuracy by accounting for the influence of neighboring areas. To account for spatial differences, a Meta-frontier Analysis is conducted, comparing liveability across groups of municipalities. This approach identifies the group-specific frontiers and the overall Meta-frontier, calculating a Liveability Gap Ratio (LGR) to measure the disparity between group performance and the overall benchmark. Cross-validation and statistical tests, such as Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn’s tests, are employed to ensure the robustness of the model. The analysis reveals spatial clusters of high and low liveability, emphasizing the significant role of spatial factors. Overall, the results prove that the study’s approach offers a valuable tool for assessing liveability, offering insights for addressing the challenges of Inner Areas.