An estimate of the Italian Consumer Confidence Index at regional level using Google Trends data

Data about consumer confidence indices are often used as a gauge of the entire economy of a country. In Italy, this information is collected by Istat and it is available at national level and at the first sub-level, the geographic area, but not at the regional level. Previous research has demonstrated that the volume of some Google searches are correlated with the consumer confidence. Since Google Trends data are available both at national and regional level, the aim of this paper is to explore they can be combined with the data offered by Istat to obtain an estimate for consumer confidence indices at the second sub-level, i.e., the regional area. To this end, a set of search topics and words have been selected as potential predictors to acquire more information about consumer confidence indices for 20 Italian regions from 2007 to 2022. The obtained regional estimates are in line with the geographic area being successful to identify the periods of economic crisis due to the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.