Environmentally Responsible Happy Nation Index: refinements and 2015 rankings

Due to the inadequacy of GDP and the importance of environmental protection from a global and long-term perspective, Ng (Social Indic Res 85:425–446, 2008) proposes the Environmentally Responsible Happy Nation Index (ERHNI) as an indicator of national success. This paper refines ERHNI through first, better estimates of key variables, second, better accounting for external costs through the inclusion of other major greenhouse gases, third, increasing sample size and fourth, using world average as a representative baseline instead of China. After which, we rank countries according to our revised and improved ERHNI and compare the results against those of Ng’s (2008). It is hoped that this paper will make contributions towards a more complete measurement of national success for future developments in a world threatened by global warming.