Rolf Sternberg, Lennard Stolz (p), Christian Hundt, Neha Rashar

Hans Westlund

Entrepreneurship is more frequent in urban regions than in rural regions. But it is not only because of digitization that new ventures will become less dependent on physical inputs and agglomerations' externalities in the future than in the past. Thus, entrepreneurship in rural areas may gain in relevance - and the old question whether person-related characteristics or attributes of the spatial context contribute more to the explanation of entrepreneurship requires new answers.
Given the paucity of evidence on rural entrepreneurship and its differences across regions, our focus lies on a first empirical and comparative assessment of rural entrepreneurship and its determinants in Germany and the UK. Combining information on regional characteristics with micro data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM, nearly 110,000 cases in total) for the period of 2012 - 2018, we address two research questions:
- How frequent is entrepreneurial activity in rural regions compared to urban entrepreneurship, in both countries?
- What kind of determinants (person-related, regional, national) explain rural entrepreneurship best?
Our empirical analysis is based upon theoretical foundations including localisation economies, multi-locality and the spatiality of digitalization, viewed through the lens of rural regions.
We intend to test six hypotheses:
- Rural entrepreneurship rates differ significantly between both countries - and are always below urban rates.
- Relative differences between rural entrepreneurship and urban entrepreneurship are lower in Germany.
- Statistically, the type of rural regions (4 types according EU) is more important than the country context in explaining the entrepreneurship rate of rural regions.
- Regional context factors to explain rural entrepreneurship differ from those that explain urban entrepreneurship.
- Regional context factors of rural entrepreneurship differ by region types.
- In rural regions composition effects are stronger than (regional) context effects.

Our results from multi-level regression models provide clear evidence for the specific role of rural entrepreneurship both in terms of their determinants and their frequency compared with urban entrepreneurship and across both countries.

This abstract is based on research done in the ongoing research project "Entrepreneurship in rural areas: scope, determinants and regional economic effects" (EntreLR) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Grant Number 2821LE003.

Diána Koponicsné Györke (p), Bernadett Horváthné Kovács, Kinga Szabó

Lennard Stolz

One of the comprehensive aims of rural development, as the 2nd pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy, is maintaining the retention capacity of the rural areas. To make these areas at least as attractive as the more urbanized parts of a region several important things are needed: fair income opportunities, available services, convenient environment. Agriculture can be obviously a key factor in rural employment. It is also clear that in population retentions younger generations are the most important target group. According to Eurostat data only 11% of farmers are under 40 in the EU member states. That is why supporting young farmers and promoting generational change can be measures of keeping the rural population in place. In our study we introduce the development of young farmers support in Hungary. Based on empirical data the study analyses the results and successfulness of the program within the timeframe of 2014-2020. The data of the examined timeframe is compared with the results of the previous programming period. Thanks to these calculations the progressive effects of the changes in the EU programming and policy making can be detected. For the analysis primary date are provided by the Hungarian Ministry of Innovation and Technology which maintains the web-based database of project calls and results for the development operational programmes of Hungary.

Jiao Huang (p), André Torre, Mayline Filippi, Frédéric Wallet

Diána Koponicsné Györke

Digitalisation changes the relationship between spaces and actors, and can potentially take rural areas into a new era. Unfortunately, it has also expanded the urban-rural divide. The EU and France quickly turned to a policy of “an Information Society for All” from the beginning of their efforts to accelerate digitalisation in the last 30 years. E-inclusion remains the main reason for which institutional resources are allocated to rural areas apart from the paradigm of “smart agriculture”. However, local digital strategies influence directly on the territory. There is no research till now on the territorialisation of national policy considering different aspects of digitalisation. The French rural territory shows different dynamics in digital transformation across the country. Has the gap between the national and local digital strategies to some extent resulted in this heterogeneity? The objective of this paper is to build a holistic framework for territorialisation of national policies to frame local digital strategies in the rural territory of France. Based upon a comprehensive review of policy documents and interviews with selected actors, the following results are obtained: 1) a chronicle summary of national digital policies in France under the influences of the EU and a common framework for digital policy at national and local levels. 2) Understanding of the roles of different levels (EU, State, region, department, municipality and intermunicipality) and their interactions in framing local digital strategies in rural areas. 3) Investigation of local digital strategies and their heterogeneity among different rural areas. Recommendations for policy-makers and future research are provided. It is hoped that this study will shed light on the territorialisation of national policy and its related institutional resources to promote local digitalisation in rural areas, which will in turn contribute to territory cohesion.
(see extended abstract)

Hans Westlund (p)

Jiao Huang

See extended abstract.