Sustainable development of the region: Approaches to selecting evaluation indicators

Sustainable development evaluation is a separate area of research and a tool to prepare and to make management decisions in regional development. There are a lot of academic publications devoted to the selection of the indicators applied to measure the regions’ sustainable development. There is an ongoing discussion about the development of a system of indicators reflecting social, economic, and ecological areas of sustainable development applicable to regional evaluation and inter-regional comparison. The approaches are different in their choice of the indicators for the region’s sustainable development evaluation, this makes it more difficult to compare and to apply, which urges the need to systematize the applied approaches. In the view of the above, the purpose of the study was to look at the selection principles for the regional development measurement, to find the regularities and differences in working out the evaluation system for the sustainable development of the region’s economy. The novelty of the research is as follows: а) a comparative analysis method is applied to reason the selection principles for the indicators used to measure the regions’ sustainable development; b) a unique conceptual model for selecting the evaluation criteria of regions’ sustainable development is developed. Theoretical importance of the paper lies in systematization of the approaches to the sustainable development evaluation at the regional level. Research’s practical value is represented by visualization of the grouping principles for the evaluation indicators. The key methods of the research are a system-based method, logic and comparative analysis. A comparative analysis method was applied to find the regularities and common approaches to measurement indicator selection by the algorithm “author – region (a group of regions) – research purpose – a set of indicators”. The data was summarized in a colored matrix as a lot of characteristics should be considered, such as the name of an indicator, unit of measurement, origin of the indicators (one or several areas of sustainable development), purpose of an indicator or a solved research task, as well as the features of the regions which these systems of indicators were prepared for. The research also considers whether the authors adhered to the requirements, such as comparability, proportionality, correspondence with the sustainable development goals, ability to reflect the development dynamics, etc. As a result, the research revealed a significant chaos in the names of the indicators, units of measurement, approaches to data processing, etc. This impedes the evaluation of regions’ sustainable development and inter-regional comparisons. However, the research found that a number of indicators applied by many authors are repeated, which makes us claim that this research is likely to have its practical application, while the wording of the key principles contributes into the development of a list of universal key (basic) indicators applicable to evaluate the sustainable development in all regions, with no exception. With this in mind, the paper offers to develop the principles required for the measurement systems and some indicators under the conceptual basis presented as an author’s model. The model has several contours and conceptual levels since it unites a list of criteria to be met by the indicators and the algorithm which should be observed in developing these criteria or requirements. Along with this, the requirements to the indicators are developed at the target, vector, indicator, and object levels, while the requirements to the system on the whole are shaped at the system level. Level-based division is conventional since the criteria are closely interrelated. In this case, a level is seen to be a dimension for the criteria and a particular step in the algorithm rather than a hierarchy. The results of the research are as follows: a compiled list of indicators which are met in many publications at the same time with no regard to their origin and research task, which proves that the system of universal indicators for evaluation of the RF regions’ sustainable development could be developed; a ready-to-use conceptual model which systematizes the requirements to the evaluation indicators for the region’s sustainable development at target, indicator, object, and system levels of analysis. The developed model was used as the basis to define a list of key requirements to the indicators applied to measure the regions’ sustainable development. Observation of these requirements in selecting the indicators will further contribute into the development of a system of basic universal indicators applicable for evaluation, comparison and decision making to achieve the sustainable development of the regional economic systems.