Hugo Pinto (p), João Ferrão, Renato Carmo

Kyra Tomay

The pandemic originated a set of impacts of different magnitudes in the territory. This article presents an exploratory approach to understand how the existence of certain vulnerabilities in the pre-crisis moment led to different impacts on territories in Portugal. Starting from the municipal scale, the analysis defines a typology of vulnerable territories according to the degrees of exposure and susceptibility they present, and compares the different groups of municipalities in this typology with territorial impacts of the pandemic crisis in terms of unemployment dynamics. The results attest to the existence of increased vulnerabilities in territories highly dependent on tourism and those that are part of metropolitan areas, whose socioeconomic structures resulted in situations of higher unemployment growth in 2020 and 2021. The article has implications for reflection on territorial vulnerability, resilience and policies to transform the Portuguese economy in the post-pandemic period.

Matteo Metta (p)

Hugo Pinto

On-farm diversification activities are a way to look at digital agriculture form the rural perspectives. While digitalisation is becoming an imperative for the future of agriculture, the impacts and relationship with on-farm diversification activities remain overshadowed by the specialization and modernisation trajectories of digital agriculture. In this paper, we review the existing literature to bring insights for setting a responsible research and innovation agenda for (studying and steering) digitalisation in the specific circumstances of agritourism, social farming, food processing, direct selling, as examples of on-farm diversification.

Krisztina Gulyas (p)

Matteo Metta

I am Krisztina Gulyás, a PhD student at the Doctoral School of Regional Economics of the Széchenyi István University in Győr (HU). The topic of my doctoral dissertation research is the analysis and comparison of the responses to the everyday challenges of family businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises in Hungary, Austria and Italy.
Part of my research (one of the chapters) is an analysis of the digital challenges facing businesses in recent years and the solutions which have emerged for them (e.g., the proliferation of the virtual assistant -in following text: VA- service and its effects on businesses). So I managed to conduct a questionnaire survey in Hungary with the involvement of the client and the agent side (54 answers of an online questionnaire), and it has turned out that not only rural businesses, but also virtual assistants have been rising in the countryside on their own and self-organizing during the pandemic live and benefit from the digital revolution, for two years now.
Lots of employees –mostly women, mothers- had to face new and unknown challenges to be able to survive – these are also more in the rural areas, where there was not easy to find a job either with home office possibility or big flexibility to manage the children in homeschooling or the elderly relatives at home during the pandemic.
I can definitively confirm, based on the questionnaire feedbacks, that this kind of cooperation and art of digital solution (the VA) can help every business, every company deliver well even on a low budget, increase the profit margin for your services or products, and ultimately raise the own market share. As well as it definitively could help other hundreds of well qualified, talented „digital“ women and mothers to earn good money and can have a better work-life balance also living in the country side. First of all, the combination of the demand and supply in the rural areas have a lot of potential and perspective in the future for the development of the rural areas, for VAs and for the business development of little and medium sized companies.
In a bigger research (international, in Austria and in Italy) I will examine the same VA topic as a chapter in my dissertation to understand and evaluate the parallels and contradictions by the answers of the challenges and opportunities in all three countries (Hungary, Austria and Italy).

Kyra Tomay (p), Gusztáv Nemes (p), Éva Orbán

Krisztina Gulyas

The presentation will explore and compare the resilience of entrepreneurial ecosystems in three rural gastro/wine tourism destinations – initiated by lifestyle entrepreneurs - in Hungary. The first part of the presentation will examine the local contexts and particular histories of the locations in becoming gastro/wine tourism destinations. We will present the role of urban incomers in initiating gastro/wine tourism events and business, where did they come from, what skills and capital were needed to succeed? How the local entrepreneurial ecosystem functions, how co-operative and competitive strategies relate to each other, etc. The second part of the presentation examines the effect of Covid19 pandemic and the connected restrictions on the local tourism business, including resilient and adaptive strategies and innovations undertaken by individual enterprises and their networks. We also explore the evolution of Covid19 stricken tourism through following immediate and longer-term effects. Finally, we will compare how local contexts, individual skill sets, capitals and networking cultures are affecting resilience and the success of adaptive strategies of entrepreneurial ecosystems during a significant external shock of the system. We intend to answer questions like: Will after the crisis, rural life return to the pre-COVID rhythm? Will the recent influx of urban migrants (‘COVID-gentrificants’) and the new life and resources brought by them help to blend rural and urban cultures into a viable basis for local prosperity? How could central and local policies lessen negative and enhance positive effects in the medium-long run?