The Metrics of Happiness: Operationalizing 'Informational Well-Being'

Abstract

Last year the authors presented a TPRC paper (“Does Happiness Matter?”) which introduced a new component of “informational well-being” into the general model of national well-being advanced by the Stiglitz Commission in 2009. It then connected the revised model to evaluating the goals of the National Broadband Plan. This paper builds on that framework and focuses on quantitatively operationalizing the concept of “informational well being”.To be fully captured as an empirical metric, “informational well being” must be decomposed into its constituent parts, and the interactions between them must be identified. This paper focuses on the infrastructural aspects of the concept. It reviews and incorporates the lessons of established models for measuring national information infrastructure and economic and social factors (e.g., the Network Readiness Index, the ICT Opportunity Index, the Digital Opportunity Index), but adds a new dimension.The prior composite indices share many similarities in their methodologies. However, slight differences in the way they are computed have resulted in large differences in outcomes, which often have political implications. Unfortunately, due to the inherent limitations of their methodology, none can avoid the charges of being over-simplistic and impractical as guides to policy. It is only for lack of a better alternative that this kind of metrics still remains prevalent.While acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of that tradition, this paper attempts to advance the discourse by also considering fundamental concepts, policies, applications and outcomes from other somewhat analogous network industries, such as transportation, power, gas pipelines and other utilities. Data mining techniques and structural equation modeling will then be applied to propose a more sophisticated set of metrics for evaluation of the infrastructural component of “informational well being”. The paper will then set articulate a specific new model based on this analysis.