Enhancing inclusive growth to create new evidence of rural diversity: an analysis in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland

Jonathan Hopkins, Margaret Currie, Nicholas Schurch, Graciela Martínez-Sánchez and Valentina Farinelli

Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2024, vol. 11, issue 1, 324-350

Abstract: This article applies a modified perspective of inclusive growth in order to understand the diversity of communities within a remote and predominantly rural region of northern Europe. A transdisciplinary process co-constructed an enhanced and regionally appropriate framework of inclusive growth, which recognised the importance of evaluating the concept as multidimensional and affected by the uneven contexts of physical geography and connectivity, and social characteristics, which influence development potential and community resilience, and which extend the relevance of inclusive growth to rural places. Operationalisation of this framework was achieved at the local level through quantitative multivariate analysis, which identified underlying dimensions of inclusive growth ‘performance’ representing interactions of broad economic outcomes and variation in geographical and social contexts, and then clusters of locations with similar characteristics. The evidence of multidimensional and geographical inequalities from this analysis was evaluated using a spatial justice perspective, enhancing the applicability of an inclusive growth framing as a means of understanding the wellbeing economy and rural diversity. Conceptually, the regionally-sensitive understanding of inclusive growth performance builds on and develops existing broader framings of inclusive growth. To avoid leaving places behind, policies which seek to achieve inclusive growth should recognise and adapt to nuanced and localised inequalities.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/21681376.2024.2342821 (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:rsrsxx:v:11:y:2024:i:1:p:324-350

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rsrs20

DOI: 10.1080/21681376.2024.2342821

Access Statistics for this article

Regional Studies, Regional Science is currently edited by Alasdair Rae

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