Richard Henry Rijnks (p), Sierdjan Koster , Philip McCann

This paper aims to add to the discussion on the relation between service provision and accessibility and regional liveability by assessing a multi-level model linking accessibility of amenities and individual subjective wellbeing. Amenities, such as shops and services, are considered to be an important factor in facilitating individual wellbeing for residents and attracting people looking to relocate. Recent studies into declining levels of accessibility in regions undergoing population decline find that the preconceived relations between service depletion and residential satisfaction are not straightforward. Studies into migration flows, for example, find no significant correlation with closure or absence of primary schools or supermarkets, and investment in rural private properties appears not to be related to regional service densities in rural regions. These results are, however, highly context dependent. Both differences in regional context (private property investment in rural areas closer to urban areas is related to service density), and the household context moderate the effect service density has on residents. This study aims to address three issues with research so far: First, not taking into account differences in regional context could lead to misspecification of models and type II errors due to inflated standard errors of the estimates. Second, generalising from studies that focus on either rural or urban regions without specifying the context would be inappropriate if the results are regional context dependent. Third, focusing on individual decision making (e.g. moving house) could induce biases. Loss aversion, for instance, also affects migration decisions, such that people are less inclined to move if moving would lead to only a small marginal improvement. Estimating the negative effects of service closure from these decisions means negative effects that do not result in migration are rendered unobservable. In this paper we estimate a multi-level model with subjective wellbeing on the left-hand side, service level provisions on the right-hand side together with individual level controls such as self-reported mobility, health, and income. This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it provides an indication of the degree to which subjective wellbeing is related to service accessibility, and to what extent this is context dependent. Second, rather than measuring individuals' decisions, we measure subjective wellbeing, which resolves the problem of negative bias in the measurement of migration decisions. Our initial results indicate that most of the regional variance in wellbeing is explained at the individual level.

Eduardo Castro, Henrique Tateishi (p), Felipe Santos, Wesley Borges, Oswaldo Artigas

This study analyzes the rural credit impact on the input use in the Brazilian agricultural sector for the year of 2006. Since 1965, when the National System of Rural credit was created, rural credit in Brazil has been unevenly distributed within the country and benefited mostly bigger farmers. Credit for medium and small farmers accounted for 38% of overall resources distributed in 2016. Besides, agricultural gross product value in Brazil is concentrated: about 8% of total agricultural establishments produced about 85% of total gross agricultural output in 2006.
It was used county data from the Agricultural Census, 2006, which is the most recent data available for this level of disaggregation. From the 5536 observations, we separated four quartiles based on the ratio of rural credit received (Crd) per the gross product value (GPV) for each municipality. First quartile ranged from zero to 10% credit per output; the second, 10% to 20%; the third, 20% to 33%; and the fourth, 33% to 356%.
We employed the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) methodology to compare the input utilization per output, output and productivity. It was compared two quartiles each time, taking the one with smaller ratio Crd/GPV as the control group. We have analyzed the whole country and also its five regions: Northeast, Southeast, South, Center-West and North to consider regional differences. For example, the average farm size in the Center-West and North regions are greater than in the other three regions.
The main results pointed out that the impact of credit is non-linear and is greater for lesser Crd/GPV quartiles. For all models, counties with larger Crd/GPV ratio tended to be less efficient concerning input use: they presented less output and higher input utilization than the control groups. For higher Crd/GPV quartiles, variable inputs tend to be substituted by capital. In general, forested land increased with more credit, except for the highest Crd/GPV quartile.
Rural credit seemed to impact more Northeast region than the other ones. Draught often strikes this region and limits agricultural activities. All input utilization increased as the ratio Crd/GPV increases and variable inputs seemed to be replaced by capital. On the other hand, in South and Southeast regions, variable inputs increase with larger amounts of credit, but neither land use nor capital did. The impact of rural credit in Center-West and North regions are similar: only land use and capital has slightly increased for larger ratios of Crd/GPV.

Burcu Yaslak (p), Aliye Ahu Akgün , Tüzin Baycan

Rural communities are intensively based on social capital while the extension of such a potential might be seen limited. Today, entrepreneurs as the main actors to achieve and sustain rural development, have a great impact on the exploitation of social capital in rural areas by the help of Internet of Things (IoT). This new type of entrepreneurs – online entrepreneurs – has become a member of the rural society and remained embedded, meanwhile, succeed to extent the potential of their rural areas by their products. This attempt has become the alternative food network as well as a social network that connects rural potential to the rest of the world. Rural entrepreneurs can deliver directly their agricultural products via online resources (web sites, blogs). The aim of our research is to understand the role of social network in e-trade by analysing entrepreneurial characteristics and ecosystem of online rural enterprises through different case studies. In addition, the network characteristics and their extension of chosen enterprises are examined under three main subjects: i) relations with local actors; ii) relations with suppliers (both producers and logistics); and iii) finally relations through e-marketplace. Online entrepreneurs whose business is related with rural agricultural products are selected as case study examples. The data are derived from the results of the interviews by the use of entrepreneurial network & ecosystem mapping. There are 3 main conclusions: (i) by using online channels, rural entrepreneurs are able to broaden their market area; (ii) agricultural lands are being protected since these rural entrepreneurs use potentials of local natural resources; and (iii) these enterprises are financially self-sustaining. The positive impact on rural development by online rural entrepreneurs at the local level is obvious. But, to extend this impact to the regional scale, it need to be promoted with public policies and planning.