Sigal Kaplan (p), Eran Feitelson , Ori Nachmani

Participatory planning practices may lead to planning decisions that are tailored better to the needs of local residents, and hence have the potential to empower communities, increase the level of satisfaction from the planning results, enhance the trust between the planners and the community, and enhance place attachment and commitment. Most of the research so far focused on the effectiveness of public participation processes, tools for enhancing the engagement quality, participation of vulnerable populations and the role of civil society organizations as promoters and mediators between the public and the various stakeholders. Regarding participation motivators, NIMBY and tendency for activism have been the most investigated concept, but research is scarce on other barriers and motivators which may be relevant to the general public.
This study focuses on the intrinsic barriers and motivators for the willingness to engage in participatory planning processes. Understanding citizen's barriers and motivators for taking part in participatory planning may produce better measures to engage the general population and understand potential self-selection that may lead to biases in citizens' recruitment processes.
The hypothesized behavioral model is based on the theory of goal-driven behavior influenced by existence, relatedness and growth (ERG) needs and the ability to overcome difficulties. In a nutshell, actions are driven by people's aim to satisfy their functional and emotional needs related to obtaining higher quality of life, togetherness, belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization. While the functional needs are mostly related to the results of the participatory planning process, namely the need to obtain satisfactory planning, the emotional needs produce eudemonic satisfaction related to the individual engagement in the process. The behavioral framework is validated with a large-scale web-based survey eliciting the willingness to engage in public participation in national master plans and under various participation scenarios, latent factors representing needs and difficulties, and socio-economic characteristics. The on-line survey, conducted in Israel, produced 522 complete and valid responses. The hypothesized relationship is validated with a structural equation model estimated on the basis of a the survey. Six factors that influence the willingness to participate. The perceived ability to make a difference and trust in the planning process positively related to perceived personal contribution, while distrust in the planning system affects the perceived difficulties to participate. The difficulties to participate and the personal contribution are correlated with feeling part of the planning milieu and the willingness to participate in public engagement for national master plans.

Ingrid Machold (p), Thomas Dax , Francesco Mantino

This contribution is based on findings from the ESPON 2020 project “Processes, Features and Cycles of Inner Peripheries in Europe (PROFECY)” finished in December 2017. Its main aim is to provide an overview on the differences of the new concept of Inner Peripheries against “classical” peripheral contexts, which extends in particular to processes of “relational proximity”/peripherality in addition to spatial locational factors. Relational proximity focusses on the ability of local actors to interact among local actors and achieve interlinkages within relevant territorial and thematic networks as well as to enhance further links with relevant territorial stakeholders at the small-scale, regional, national and transnational levels. By applying the framework of Inner Peripheries and including trans-regional interlinkages and a renewed proximity approach, the scope and quality of interrelations of remote/disadvantaged territories offer a wider set of opportunities for regional development, enhanced options to provide access to Services of General Interests, and impacts on the local/regional labour market dynamics.

Since inner peripheries reveal strong influences of local context each case study of the ESPON project disposes of specific place-based characteristics and patterns of peripheralization. Thus, the paper will focus on the spatial context conditions and evolution of two Case Studies of inner periphery in Austria and Italy as well as their coping strategies to overcome spiraling-down processes. By way of analyzing and comparing the respective drivers and processes of peripheralization in these two different contexts, generalizable findings about suitable strategies and regional action to overcome these specific peripheralization processes will be discussed.

Angel Martin-Roman (p), Jaime Cuellar-Martin (p), Alfonso Moral, Javier Martin-Roman

Active labor market policies are a tool used by Public Administrations aimed at increasing the level of employment and reducing the unemployment rate of an economy. Some regional governments in Spain have implemented employment plans to support national actions, in many cases co-financed by the European Social Fund. In the case of Castile and Leon, the first Regional Employment Plan of Castile and Leon (PRECyL) was put into action in 1998 with duration of three years. This one was followed by the Second Regional Employment Plan of Castile and Leon (SPRECyL), for the period 2001-2003. Both of them have been already evaluated with outcomes showing actually no effects in terms of employment promotion or unemployment reduction (Martin-Roman, 2007; Martin-Roman et al., 2017). However the third Regional Employment Plan of Castile and Leon (TPRECyL) has not been evaluated yet. This paper aims to carry out an impact evaluation of such a plan.

Castile and Leon is the largest NUTS-2 region in the EU when taking into consideration the territory size. Although it is not densely populated, we deem that it deserves to be studied. In Spain, there are 17 NUTS-2 spatial units (Autonomous Communities) without taking into account 2 autonomous cities (Ceuta and Melilla), being Castile and Leon one of them. At the same time, Spain is made up of 50 NUTS-3 spatial units (Provinces) and out of them, 9 NUTS-3 spatial units (18%) belongs to Castile and Leon.

Our methodological approach assumes that the 9 Spanish provinces pertaining to Castile and Leon are the treated “individuals” and the remaining 41 provinces are considered the control group. This assumption allow us to make use of the diff-in-diff techniques (Meyer, 1995) in order to assess whether the TPRECyL has been effective (or not) to reduce the unemployment rate and/or to increase the employment to population ratio. Furthermore, we also extend the analysis so as to allow for spatial effects as we deem that spillover effects might be important in this context. Thus, we employ the diff-in-diff methodology with spatial effects developed by Delgado and Florax (2015) to obtain an impact evaluation of the TPRECyL.

The policy implications are potentially profound. A correct evaluation of the TPRECyL is required for two main reasons: (1) the large amount of public financial resources devoted to this policy and (2) the high unemployment levels registered in Spain, including the Castile and Leon provinces.

Kristina Matuzeviciute (p), Mindaugas Butkus , Alma Maciulyte-Sniukiene

This paper aims to provide a conceptual model to assess return on the EU’s regional financial support. From the economic perspective, assessing the return on regional funding is important in order to determine whether financial support leads to higher labour productivity, faster economic growth and boosts the speed of regional convergence, which would justify the cost of regional policy. These issues since 2000 are widely discussed in scientific researches. However, they mainly focus on the assessment of regional funding intensity without analysing the return on this funding or surveys are carried out at the national level. That reveals the lack of the width of these researches. Moreover, studies do not identify impact transition channels that restrict or promote return of regional support. Quality of institutions is one of the key factors which influence regional support absorption and return. In order to eliminate these limitations, based on theoretical analysis, we constructed model, that allows to evaluate not only the nexus among intensity of funding, labour productivity and economic growth, but also to identify and assess channels that promote / limit the impact of the support. Applying this model empirically could give some insights to regional policy redistributing structural funds.