Measuring the Economic, Social and Environmental Performance of European Island Regions: Emerging Issues for European and Regional Policy

Ioannis Spilanis, Thanasis Kizos, Michail Vaitis and Nikoletta Koukourouvli

European Planning Studies, 2013, vol. 21, issue 12, 1998-2019

Abstract: Islands in the European Union (EU) are very diverse, with many small or very small islands and are recognized as territories facing particular development challenges. In this study, we seek to compare the state and the attractiveness of island administration units in their national and EU context and highlight their divergence in different dimensions, building on existing analysis of the European Commission and of ESPON, using more indicators than the GDP per capita. The assessment is performed with the use of five different indexes: one for the state of development, one for changes during 2000--2006 and three for the attractiveness of islands (direct effects of insularity to attractiveness, indirect effects and natural and cultural potential of islands). Findings for economy demonstrate that islands with better economic performance either specialize in a low added value activity (tourism), or have their GDP "boosted" by exogenous influences (duty free area, oil extraction or the public sector). For attractiveness, most of the islands perform very low and the situation of small islands and archipelagos is worse. Since insularity can be considered as a permanent, natural feature affecting negatively, directly and indirectly, most of the factors that make islands attractive, the need for a territorial policy emerges.

Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09654313.2012.722970 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eurpls:v:21:y:2013:i:12:p:1998-2019

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEPS20

DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2012.722970

Access Statistics for this article

European Planning Studies is currently edited by Philip Cooke and Louis Albrechts

More articles in European Planning Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().