Does the coastal location of municipalities influence their innovation development?

Abstract

The coastal regions are increasingly in the focus of contemporary academic research as economically favorable territories with high innovative potential. The coastalization factor gets individual attention, the influence of which is registered in various countries of the world as a tendency of the population and economic activity to concentrate in the coastal zone. However, there is significant heterogeneity between the coastal areas, due to natural and climatic features and affecting their economic development. This paper focuses on assessing the differences in the readiness of the coastal regions of the European part of Russia to the innovation economy, taking into account their geographical location (northern, northwestern, southern). The study is conducted at the level of municipalities across 6 regions of Russia: Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Leningrad, Kaliningrad, Rostov regions, and Krasnodar Krai. The research methodology included an assessment of 4 most important components of an innovative economy: human capital, business environment, knowledge production, and technological equipment. The results of the study showed a high degree of spatial divergence in terms of the level of readiness for the development of an innovative economy both between the regions of the sample and within them in the inter-municipal context. It is revealed that the concentration of innovative potential within the coastal region is largely the result of the cross-influence of the agglomeration and the coastalization factors. In the case of their complementary influence on coastal municipalities, the latter are characterized by a relatively higher level of readiness for the development of an innovative economy than inland ones. This is true for both the northern, northwestern, and southern coastal regions of the European part of Russia.