Spatial analysis of the impact of transport accessibility on regional performance: A study for Europe

Several works have addressed the impact of transport accessibility on regional development. Nevertheless, it is not consensual that new levels of accessibility lead to the improvement of regional development. This article proposes a methodological approach to assess whether significant relationship exist between these two variables. The methodology uses Data Envelopment Analysis to evaluate regional performance and spatial statistics methods (local bivariate relationships) to evaluate the type of relationships between accessibility and perfor-mance for each region, along with its significance. The approach was applied to 186 NUTS that cover 19 Eu-ropean countries, extending previous works which focus on global results, in the sense that only one (usually large) area is considered. Results indicate that approximately half the regions have a significant relationship between transport accessibility and regional performance. Logit regression analyses show that central regions are more likely to exhibit significance, as well as regions with high (low) levels of performance surrounded by re-gions with high (low) levels of accessibility, hinting at a synergy between the two variables. An important policy implication is that regions of high performance surrounded by regions of low accessibility may benefit from investments in the transport infrastructure.

Automated summary

This article proposes a methodological approach to assess the impact of transport accessibility on regional development and finds that approximately half of the regions have a significant relationship between the two. Additionally, central regions and regions with opposite levels of performance and accessibility are more likely to exhibit significance, hinting at a synergy between the variables. In terms of policy implications, regions of high performance but low accessibility may benefit from investments in transport infrastructure.