Ensuring the social acceptance of disaster management policies and promoting the well-being of residents in safe environments requires consideration not only of objective risk levels but also of subjective risk perception. When individuals perceive hazards as uncontrollable, their anxiety tends to increase, highlighting the importance of training programs that strengthen coping capacity as a critical aspect of disaster management. Against this backdrop, this study examines the effect of coping capacity on disaster-related risk perception in South Korea. Despite rapid economic growth and improvements in living standards, South Korea continues to report lower life satisfaction than the OECD average, largely due to recurring natural and man-made disasters that amplify social anxiety. This study distinguishes between natural and man-made disasters to analyze the factors influencing risk perception and to explore requirements for more effective safety systems. Using pooled cross-sectional data from four waves of Statistics Korea's Social Survey (2018-2024), the analysis applies a binary logistic model. The results show that coping knowledge reduces fear associated with risk perception, but its effect varies by health status, suggesting the need for risk education tailored to health conditions. In addition, differences by gender, education, income, and regional exposure indicate the necessity of prioritizing vulnerable groups in disaster management strategies. Furthermore, regional emergency response accessibility was found to mitigate perceived risk of natural disasters, highlighting the importance of improving accessibility to emergency services as a means of strengthening disaster response capacity.
There are few in-depth studies on urban collaborative innovation between subjects and cities. Based on the triple helix (TH) theory and innovation network theory, this study constructs the theoretical framework of the urban collaborative innovation system from the collaboration between innovation subjects and the spatial correlation between cities. By using the invention patent data of 30 innovative cities from 2014 to 2023, this paper empirically examined the rule characteristics, evolution trend, and synergetic degree of the urban innovation system in China. The results show that: (1) The innovation capacity of Chinese cities has been continuously enhanced, and the imbalance in innovation levels among cities is relatively prominent. Inter-city innovation cooperation has evolved from a “dual-core driven” network structure to a “multi-center driven” one. (2) The bilateral relationship of university-industry within a city is the closest. There are specific substitution and crowding-out effects between industry-university collaboration and industry-government collaboration. (3) In the trilateral relationship of university-industry-government, cities like Changchun, Shenyang and Dalian have relatively close tripartite collaboration, while cities like Shenzhen, Dongguan and Jiaxing have relatively loose tripartite relationships. (4) The inter-city correlation of urban agglomeration is prominently better than that of other regions, especially in clusters of the Yangtze River Delta and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. (5) The intercity tight-subject tight, encompassing 17 cities such as Nanjing, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou, is the most important collaborative category. The research results provide theoretical sustenance and policy enlightenment for coordinating the relationship between different subjects and cities in collaborative innovation.
Digital talent mobility is crucial for enhancing regional competitiveness, yet its influencing factors exhibit notable spatio-temporal heterogeneity. This study examines how interacting macro-, meso-, and micro-level factors shape digital talent mobility across urban agglomerations in China. GeoDetector is first used to identify key interaction effects, which are then incorporated into the Geographically and Temporally Neural Network Weighted Regression model for coefficient estimation under flexible and data-driven spatio-temporal weighting. The results show that the effects of macroeconomic and industrial conditions are highly uneven across space and time. This unevenness is further shaped by healthcare provision and air quality, which influence talent mobility both directly and by modifying the role of labour-market and development conditions. The findings show that digital talent mobility is characterised by interaction-dependent and spatio-temporally dynamic relationships. It provides evidence for more differentiated regional talent policies.
This article investigates how smart specialisation strategies (S3) in the Swedish regions are evolving to align with the European Green Deal (EGD) and its transformative ambitions for sustainable development. Drawing on a content analysis of 14 S3 strategies from seven regions across two EU programme periods (2014-2020 and 2021-2027), the study explores the integration of EGD focus areas and cross-sectoral transformative goals. The analysis reveals that, while energy, industry, and food systems are commonly addressed, the extent and manner of integration vary significantly across regions, reflecting differences in industrial structures, governance capacities, and regional trajectories. Although traditional innovation approaches focusing on technological development remain dominant, there are emerging signs of mission-oriented and systemic ambitions, such as circular economy models and bioeconomy transitions. However, the inclusion of broader societal actors and values, which is central to transformative innovation policy, remains limited. The article concludes that, while S3 strategies in Sweden show incremental steps towards transformative change, substantial challenges remain if smart specialisation is to fully serve as a governance tool for societal transformation. These findings underscore the need for stronger regional governance capacities, cross-sectoral collaboration, and alternative pathway thinking to meet the ambitions of the EGD.
A substantial body of research has documented the shift from convergence to divergence in inter-regional income disparities and identified the key forces driving this transformation, including educational sorting, technological change and globalization. Yet, despite growing recognition that spatial patterns of income inequality are sensitive to the choice of geographical scale, relatively few studies have explored scalar dynamics in the U.S. In this paper, we apply a two-stage nested Theil decomposition method to examine the role played by the choice of geographical scale in describing patterns of inter-regional income inequalities over the 1970 to 2020 period. We use three geographical scales in our analysis: quasi-states, commuting zones, and counties. We find that inter-regional income inequalities increase over time across all three scales, but the speed of this increase varies significantly across the different geographical scales. In 1970, inter-regional income inequalities between states explained most of the overall levels of inter-regional income inequalities. Over the ensuing decades, however, inter-regional income inequalities within commuting zones subsequently rise more rapidly (than inequalities between states or commuting zones) and by 2020 explain the largest portion of overall inter-regional inequalities. This suggests that smaller-scale divergence, especially inequalities within local labor market areas, is a key driver of the recent rise in inter-regional inequality. By highlighting the growing importance of intra-metropolitan or intra-labor market inequalities, this study contributes to theoretical debates on spatial divergence and urban sorting, emphasizing that the mechanisms driving regional inequality must be understood not only across regions but also within them.
Utilizing the panel data of 284 cities from 2005 to 2019 in China, this paper employs the multi-period difference-in-differences model to explore the impacts of the opening of high-speed rail (HSR) on green innovation as well as the underlying mechanisms and heterogeneity in the impacts. The results show that the opening of HSR effectively promotes green innovation, and this finding remains robust after a series of robustness tests. The positive impact operates not only by fostering labor agglomeration and increasing R&D expenditure but also by stimulating demand for green technologies through talent concentration and tourism expansion. Heterogeneity analyses show that the effect is concentrated in peripheral cities, cities with weaker innovation endowments, and smaller-scale cities. Based on further classification of green patent records show the opening of HSR actively promotes the growth of substantive green innovation and green innovation by enterprises, and exerts a stronger effect on green innovation in heavily polluting industries. We further demonstrate that HSR opening significantly promotes inter-city collaborative green innovation. Our findings shed new light on the economic and environmental effects of improvement in transportation infrastructure.
With the deepening of economic cooperation between China and ASEAN, economic linkages exhibit pronounced regional differentiation. Taking Chinese provinces as the analytical scale, this study employs a modified gravity model, spatial correlation network analysis, and the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) to examine the structural characteristics and driving factors of the spatial economic network between Chinese provinces and ASEAN countries. The results show that: (1) from 2012 to 2023, economic linkages among Chinese provinces strengthened, while linkages among ASEAN countries weakened; Chinese coastal and border provinces maintained stronger economic ties with ASEAN than inland and northern provinces; (2) the density of the China-ASEAN regional economic network increased, while its hierarchical concentration declined markedly, indicating a transition from a unipolar structure to a multi-centered nested structure; and (3) differences in economic development and industrial structure exert dual effects on the spatial correlation network. Based on these findings, this study argues that policy efforts should focus on leveraging the multi-centered nested spatial structure, strengthening connections between core and non-core regions, improving the stability and connectivity of the regional economic network, and enhancing the matching of industrial and factor conditions to mitigate the constraining effects of regional disparities, thereby promoting China-ASEAN economic cooperation toward broader coverage and higher quality.
Knowledge cooperation underpins innovation systems, yet it is rarely balanced: some actors predominantly generate knowledge, while others primarily adopt and adapt it. We extend this insight geographically by examining how cities function as providers or receivers of innovative knowledge. Challenging reciprocal views of cooperation, we develop an asymmetry-sensitive indicator that combines geographic niche overlap with social network analysis to position cities along provider-receiver spectra and to capture direct and indirect spillovers across scales. Using co-patent flows in China (2008-2022), we trace intercity knowledge exchange within, across, and outside urban regions. Results reveal pronounced directional imbalances: a few cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuhan consolidate dominance as providers, with their influence intensifying at larger geographic scales, while many other cities' provider roles attenuate beyond home regions. Cities' roles are strongly shaped by their positions within innovation networks and by the regional spatial structures in which they are embedded. This work offers a new lens for understanding urban innovation networks by framing knowledge exchange as directional and asymmetric. It calls for further research on power dynamics of asymmetric cooperation, sectoral differentiation, and international co-patenting, paving the way for a more nuanced analysis of knowledge flows in urban innovation systems.
This article investigates new job creation across European Union regions in 2022 and the endogenous changes in labor market participation following the COVID-19 outbreak. We jointly model new hires in 2022 and shifts in participation between 2021 and 2022 using demand-side predictors, which are rarely applied in supply-oriented studies due to limited institutional data. The analysis combines official CEDEFOP data on job advertisements posted on online portals across the EU in 2021-disaggregated by region and occupation-with the Labor Force Survey, which provides information on new hires and regional or institutional determinants affecting both outcomes. We employ recently developed sample selection models with copulas, allowing for flexible dependence structures, and include pseudo-random effects to account for the hierarchical nature of regions nested within states. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine post-COVID-19 employment creation for all European Union regions using such models integrating survey and online job advertisement data. The results show that, although regions with strong adult lifelong learning systems are better positioned to generate new employment opportunities, job creation has been primarily driven by rising demand for medium- and low-skilled occupations, thereby stimulating participation. New employment is concentrated in regions with lower shares of technology-skilled workers, regardless of tertiary education levels, indicating a structural shift in the post-pandemic labor market. The determinants of regional job creation differ sharply between Old and New Member States, suggesting distinct policy challenges and priorities.
As the global climate crisis intensifies, the transition toward green and sustainable development has become a central pillar of global development. This study employs the Super-Efficiency SBM model to calculate the Green Total Factor Productivity (GTFP) of 30 provincial-level administrative regions in China from 2003 to 2022. It further analyzes the spatial agglomeration effects, regional spatiotemporal differentiation patterns, and spatial spillover effects of GTFP. Finally, the Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index decomposition method is applied to explore the dynamic evolution and underlying drivers of GTFP growth across provinces and regions. The findings reveal that: (1) GTFP exhibits an "East-High, West-Low" spatial pattern and a "Decline-then-Rise" evolutionary trajectory; (2) GTFP exhibits a significant but gradually diminishing spatial convergence effect; (3) The overall disparity in GTFP is primarily driven by inter-regional inequality; however, the emerging risk of intra-regional polarization within developed areas presents a new challenge; (4) The spatial spillover effects of GTFP display complex nonlinear characteristics, including driving, inhibitory, and siphoning effects; (5) China's GTFP growth is predominantly driven by technological change, with the turning points for transformation varying markedly across regions. Based on these findings, we propose a targeted policy framework with specific implementation paths for different types of regions, aiming to enhance policy adaptability and feasibility while advancing the core goals of green and low-carbon transition.
In modern economic society, branding is the unique intangible asset of a city, fully showcasing its soft power. However, the lack of academic research on the value of city brand may hinder the progress in understanding and applying it in the academic community. Therefore, this paper examines the impact of city brand development on urban resilience through the selection of National Civilized Cities (NCCs) in China. It further investigates the influence mechanisms, heterogeneity effects, and spatial spillover effects of NCCs on urban resilience. Our results indicate that: (1) NCCs can significantly improve China's urban resilience. The reliability of this conclusion is evidenced by various tests. (2) NCCs have a positive impact on economic, social, infrastructure, information resilience, while they have a negative impact on ecological resilience. (3) Urban innovation and investment expansion are important pathways for enhancing urban resilience through NCCs. (4) The effects of NCCs on urban resilience are more pronounced in small-medium cities, non-resource-based cities and cities with lower level of marketization. (5) NCCs can significantly enhance the resilience of surrounding cities. Therefore, local governments should recognize the importance of brand in the process of urban development and strive to enhance urban resilience by creating a unique and attractive city brand.
Coordinated regional development should direct attention to both the intra-regional structure and elucidate the collective influence of pivotal drivers. As the core of China's development of new quality productive forces, technological innovation and digital economy are of great significance in reshaping regional coordinated development. This paper scrutinizes the collective influence of technological innovation and the digital economy on the coordinated development of the "center-periphery" structure in regional economy (CDCPSRE), and examines three potential mechanisms: industrial restructuring, industrial integration, and transportation infrastructure. Moreover, it delves deeper into threshold effects, external shocks, and regional heterogeneity during the impact of technological innovation and the digital economy on CDCPSRE. The paper's conclusions show that: (1) the digital economy distinctly enhances CDCPSRE, whereas the converse holds true for technological innovation. (2) The influences of technological innovation and the digital economy on CDCPSRE manifest through three mechanisms: industrial adjustment, industrial integration, and transport infrastructure. (3) The extended analysis reveals a notable double-threshold effect for both technological innovation and the digital economy on regional coordinated development. External shocks to policies are present and align with the benchmark regression. Moreover, significant spatial heterogeneity is observed across regions. Theoretical underpinnings furnished in this paper contribute substantively to elucidating the trajectory for fortifying CDCPSRE.
The role of entrepreneurial ecosystems in promoting entrepreneurial activity in rural regions remains underexplored. This paper examines how entrepreneurial ecosystems influence entrepreneurial activity in rural regions, using a configuration perspective of entrepreneurial ecosystem theory. We apply a hybrid method of Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to 55 counties in Anhui Province, a representative agricultural region of China. The results reveal that: (1) none of the six ecosystem elements (government policies, development potential, financial services, human capital, technological capacity, and public services) are necessary for high entrepreneurial activity; (2) there are six configuration paths for high entrepreneurial activity, each with different core conditions and complementary factors; (3) there is a "hat paradox" phenomenon in the development of county entrepreneurial activities between national and non-national returning-to-hometown entrepreneurship demonstration counties; (4) all five configuration paths of non-high entrepreneurial activity lack the core condition of financial services; and (5) there are significant regional differences in achieving high entrepreneurial activity in the north, middle, and south Anhui. The paper provides theoretical and practical implications for enhancing county entrepreneurial ecosystems and invigorating regional entrepreneurial dynamism.
This paper examines how local knowledge about migration destinations affects housing tenure decisions for movers in the US, particularly long-distance movers-those who have moved more than 50 miles-while considering other channels of information. Using data from the American Community Survey from 2012 to 2019, we find that among long-distance movers, geographic distance seems to lower the likelihood of owning their next home, while social connectedness can mitigate this effect considerably. This result is robust across different empirical specifications. Our analysis also shows that these channels of information may have significantly different implications for short-distance movers' housing tenure choices compared to long-distance movers.
As environmental risks and technological competition intensify, the risks and disturbances associated with urban technology networks are escalating. The development of resilience in urban technology networks contributes to the achievement of high-quality urban development. This paper focuses on the resilience of urban technology networks, offering a systematic review and analysis of related concepts and theory. Secondly, the resilience of urban technology networks under different attack situations is measured, followed by an analysis of its spatial distribution and regional variations. A thorough analytical framework is established based on evolutionary economic geography theories, emphasizing the importance of network structure and institutional environments in driving the resilience of urban technology networks. Finally, employing the fsQCA method, this study explores the improvement paths of the resilience of urban technology networks under different attack situations, from the perspectives of network structure and institutional environments, and analyzes regional heterogeneity. The research findings indicate that, under random attack situations, there are three pathways for enhancing the resilience of urban technology networks: industry development driven by high transmission efficiency, economic leadership and research investment-driven, and institutional environment-driven. There are three pathways for enhancing the resilience of urban technology networks under target attack situations: economic leadership and talent aggregation-driven, technology collaboration-talent aggregation-industry development -driven, and network structure and institutional environments-driven. The findings of this study illustrate spatial distribution and the improvement paths of resilience of urban technology networks. This research contributes to deepening the discourse on urban safety and development, providing insights for urban managers in city safety governance. Additionally, it offers a theoretical foundation and practical case experiences for other cities in formulating strategies for promoting the resilience of urban technology networks.
Understanding how regional cooperation shapes urban land use efficiency is essential for promoting sustainable development of urban agglomeration. Existing literature mainly focuses on the direct impact of regional economic cooperation on urban land use efficiency while overlooking the indirect effects transmitted through intercity network structures. This study investigates the effects of regional economic cooperation network on urban land use efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration between 2010 and 2019. Utilizing a modified gravity model to quantify regional economic cooperation networks and a Slack-Based Measure method to evaluate urban land use efficiency, we reveal a significant and positive influence of regional economic cooperation networks on land use efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta. The findings suggest that cities leveraging economic interconnectivity networks not only enhance their land-use efficiency but also benefit from network spillover effects. These insights provide valuable implications for policymakers and urban designers seeking to promote economic development while ensuring the sustainable use of urban land resources.
This paper analyzes the intrinsic relationship between urban innovation capability and inter-city collaborative innovation, utilizing panel data for 76 cities within China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt covering the period 2005–2021. The results indicate that as a city’s innovation capability strengthens, the level of collaborative innovation among them significantly increases. This positive effect operates through promoting the flow of innovative elements, enhancing knowledge spillovers, and fostering technological complementarity. Further analysis reveals that high-speed rail connectivity, supportive government innovation policies, and higher city administrative levels significantly reinforce this positive relationship. While enterprises currently dominate inter-city collaboration, significant potential remains for collaborations involving enterprises and governments, research institutions, and universities. Furthermore, our analysis confirms that innovation capability has a positive spatial spillover effect on inter-city collaborative innovation. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that enhancing urban innovation capability selectively promotes substantive collaborative innovation while inhibiting non-substantive forms, and this positive promoting effect is particularly pronounced within technology-intensive industries. This research offers new perspectives on the capability-collaboration linkage within a major economic region, providing empirically grounded support for implementing innovation-driven development strategies.
A cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of social and economic effects of regional administrative and fiscal decentralisation is carried out. Spain regions from 2008 to 2021 are analysed by means of Data Envelopment Analysis as well as bootstrapped Tobit regressions and panel data. The study contributes to ongoing debates in regional science by introducing a horizontal approach to decentralisation-comparing institutional variation across regions at the same administrative level-thus complementing the traditionally vertical analyses between levels of government. Results show that both administrative and fiscally decentralised regions have better socio-economic performance, except for 3 years when considering social efficiency of administrative decentralisation by means of cross-sectional analysis. This article contributes to the field of federalisation theory in the following three ways: (1) when recessions start, administrative decentralisation reduces social efficiency which justify centralisation to deal with crises; (2) the design of decentralisation is the key factor to be considered; (3) it is necessary to avoid the overlapping of regional public administration. The results offer theoretical support for second-generation fiscal federalism theories, which stress the importance of institutional design, governance quality and incentive alignment. For policy makers, the findings suggest that decentralisation per se is not sufficient: well-calibrated fiscal rules and institutional clarity are essential to enhance efficiency. Internationally, our evidence highlights lessons for federal and asymmetrically decentralised systems, particularly regarding the risk of inefficiencies stemming from overlapping competences.
Despite development efforts, Native Nations exhibit higher poverty rates and associated social concerns than other US areas. Business development is a way to sustainably reduce poverty. This article uses several estimation techniques to provide longitudinal descriptive evidence on business activity in Native Nations sharing geographies with the contiguous United States using county level data spanning portions of the Self-Determination Era (1968–2000) and the Nation-to-Nation Era (2000-present). In doing so, this article contributes to existing work about Native American economic development by assessing business trends in Native areas over time. The analysis yielded three important findings. First, Native American counties have higher firm counts and business churn per capita than other counties. Second, Native American businesses are more likely to be employers than nonemployers on average, suggesting Native American businesses reach the important business milestone of having employees at a higher percentage than Non-Native American businesses. Third, employment in Native American areas is especially concentrated in a few sectors (e.g., construction, retail trade, and accommodation and food services), and while these areas were less concentrated than Non-Native American counties in the early 2000s, there is suggestive evidence that they are becoming more concentrated over time. In terms of implications, policy should continue to take a more progressive stance in Native American areas. Policy should aim to improve entrepreneurship and industrial diversity in those areas to improve economic resiliency. Long-term policies should focus on diversifying the local economies of Native American counties to more sustainable engines of growth.
Why do some places prosper while others do not? Measuring community-level prosperity is of widespread academic concern and public interest. While quality of life research on urban places is well established, insights into the prosperity of rural places are less developed. Further, much of the rural-oriented literature focuses on economic growth, which has the potential to mask non-growth prosperity characteristics. We follow Isserman et al. (2009) in their efforts to measure community-level prosperity outside the growth-paradigm for U.S. counties. We use geographic sequence analysis to build on their "prosperity index" by extending it longitudinally to measure prosperity at four (approximated) points in time (1990, 2000, 2008-2012, 2018-2022). Sequence analysis allows us to organize multivariate, longitudinal data into prosperity sequence sets - what we term "prosperity pathways" - thus highlighting the importance of time and history into a spatially-informed analysis of prosperity. Our findings enable us to confirm what is ostensibly true in that prosperity is a dynamic and evolutionary process with significant geographic variation.
