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A capacity approach to territorial resilience: the case of European regions

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Abstract

Regional resilience is a new paradigm to explain the local system ability to cope with a negative event, tolerating the effect produced by the perturbing action. The first objective of the paper is to analyze the complex concept of regional resilience, adopting a systemic and holistic approach. Using a multidimensional methodology, regional resilience is described by outcome and driver variables, with focus on sustainability of local systems, broken down into the three pillars of economy, society and environment, whereby the holistic approach means that each dimension of territorial sustainable development is partly determined by its relations with the other dimensions. The second aim of the paper is then to test the relations between determinants and outcome of regional resilience. This framework is different compared to previous empirical studies, which primarily focus on economic performance in terms of income or employment dynamics. The model is applied to the case of European regions, to get a map of regional resilience in its different dimensions.

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Notes

  1. “The high resilience allows tests of those novel combinations because the system-wide costs of failure are low. The result is the condition needed for creative experimentation” (Holling 2001).

  2. Regional Studies recently dedicated a themed issue right at the “resilience revisited” (Bailey and Turok 2016), where different authors analyze the resilience processes following this approach in different English, Turkish, Canadian, Australian and European regions.

  3. The World Bank developed a composite indicator of people’s preparation for risk at country level which comprises measures of assets across four components of socio-economic systems: human capital, physical and financial assets, social support, State support (World Bank 2014).

  4. These regions belongs to 21 European countries, that do not include Bulgarian, Cypriot, Croatian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Maltese, Norwegian, Rumanian regions and the French islands, for the presence of too many missing values.

  5. The Cliff and Ord model is described by two equations: \(Y={\lambda }WY+X\beta +u\) and \(u={\rho }Wu+\varepsilon \), where \(\varepsilon \) is assumed to be independent and identically distributed or independent but heteroscedastically distributed, and the heteroscedasticity is of unknown form. In the right member of the first equation among the regressors, a variable of spatial lag is inserted. It is defined pre-multiplying the variable to regress (Y) with the spatial-weighting matrix (W). This endogenous variable (WY) is the weighted average of the dependent variable values observed in other statistical units. By means of the second equation, the model takes into account also that the error terms (u) are generated by a spatial autoregressive process. These two equations estimate simultaneously the values of each statistical unit. Consequently, the values of the dependent variable are not independent from each other. The W matrix is constructed as a matrix of contiguity, considering the geographical proximity of the European regions, and weighing the proximity with the geographical coordinates of the centroid of each region. The parameter \({\lambda }\) measures the intensity of spatial interactions and spillovers effects. The parameter measures the spatial autocorrelation of the error term. The parameter \({\beta }\) takes into account that in the dependent variables the values of each region are determined simultaneously from each other (Drukker et al. 2013).

  6. This estimator is consistent and robust when the error term is heteroscedastically distributed.

  7. The environmental resilience cannot be taken under consideration because of missing data. This causes the reduction in the number of European regions considered.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Economic Sciences, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza, Italy

    Paolo Rizzi

  2. Local Economy Laboratory, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza, Italy

    Paola Graziano & Antonio Dallara

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  1. Paolo Rizzi
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  2. Paola Graziano
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  3. Antonio Dallara
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Correspondence to Paolo Rizzi.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 9 and 10.

Table 9 The selected variables of resilience in European Regions
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Table 10 Economic, social, environmental Resilience Drivers Composite Indicator (rank)
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Rizzi, P., Graziano, P. & Dallara, A. A capacity approach to territorial resilience: the case of European regions. Ann Reg Sci 60, 285–328 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-017-0854-1

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