Overcoming the inconsistences of the variance inflation factor: a redefined VIF and a test to detect statistical troubling multicollinearity

Abstract: Multicollinearity is relevant to many different fields where linear regression models are applied, and its existence may affect the analysis of ordinary least squares (OLS) estimators from both the numerical and statistical points of views. Thus, multicollinearity can lead to incoherence in the statistical significance of the independent variables and the global significance of the model. The variance inflation factor (VIF) is traditionally applied to diagnose the possible existence of multicollinearity, but it is not always the case that detection by VIF of a troubling degree of multicollinearity corresponds to negative effects on the statistical analysis. The reason for the lack of specificity of VIF is that there are other factors, such as the size of the sample and the variance of the random disturbance, that can lead to high values of the VIF but not to problematic variance in the OLS estimators (see O'Brien 2007). This paper presents a new variance inflation factor (TVIF) that consider all these additional factors. Thresholds for this new measure and from the index provided by Stewart (1987) are also provided. These thresholds are reinterpreted and presented as a new statistical test to diagnose the existence of statistical troubling multicollinearity. The contributions of this paper are illustrated with two real data examples previously applied in the scientific literature.