Multicriteria analysis reveals that socio-economic factors overshadow physical distance in regional development across European territories, suggesting new directions for territorial policy.
This paper proposes a new way for assessing regional attractiveness using a multidimensional framework, including distance from development poles. It applies the Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA)- Preference Ranking Organisation METhod for Enrichment of Evaluations (PROMETHEE) approach, which, departing from common practice, avoids data normalisation, compensatory trade-offs and arbitrary weight assignments. PROMETHEE handles data aggregation without normalisation or compensation, while SMAA eliminates subjective weights. Applied to 238 EU NUTS 2 regions, with a focus on islands as peculiar peripheral regions, it emerges that distance plays a limited role in regional development, as socio-economic factors largely capture its effects. This approach offers insights to enhance policy design regarding peripheral areas.
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Corrente et al. (2026) studied this question.
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