The Equitable and Sustainable well-being Through the Pandemic: A Preliminary Study to Assess Changes at Local Level in Italy

The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on many aspects of the daily lives of individuals, families, and, in general, society, and it has also changed the shape and extent of territorial inequalities by exerting different impacts on the well-being domains. This chapter aims to describe the effect of the pandemic on the equitable and sustainable well-being of Italian provinces. The reference framework is represented by the well-known set of indicators proposed by Istat to measure equitable and sustainable well-being (called BES from the Italian Benessere Equo e Sostenibile). The multidimensional nature of this concept is handled assuming a hierarchical structure in which the BES is the higher order multidimensional construct, while all the other domains (namely the different dimensions forming the concept: safety, economic well-being, environment, etc.) belong to the lower part of the hierarchy (they are lower order constructs) and together contribute to its measurement. First, to estimate the parameters of the model, we use the Partial Least Squares Path Modeling. The technique estimates, through a system of interdependent simple and multiple regressions, a network of relationships between the observed indicators and the different domains and between the domains as well. Second, the research aims to study the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the individual components of BES and their reciprocal interrelationships, with a special focus on the latent constructs.