Weighting life domains with Data Envelopment Analysis

The specialised literature has frequently addressed the relationship between life domains and people’s satisfaction with life. Some researchers have posed questions regarding the importance of domains, therefore interpreting them as weights and creating domain satisfaction indices. This paper employs Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Multi-Criteria-Decision-Making (MCDM) techniques to obtain a series of computer-based weightings for life domains from a sample of 178 people living in a rural community in Yucatan (Mexico). The main feature of these weightings is that they might differ from one individual or domain to another. Consequently, several weighting schemes are used to compute different DEA-based life satisfaction indices and also a constant equally-weighted index. Based on the goodness-of-fit criteria commonly employed in this literature, our main result is that computer DEA-based indicators do not improve the relationship with selfreported life satisfaction in comparison to the equally-weighted index of life satisfaction.