Purpose

Investment promotion is gaining in popularity, yet its relationship with regional development remains unclear and under-investigated. The purpose of this paper is to combine place marketing and regional development concepts to explore investment promotion in the Czech, Polish and Slovak regions. It identifies elements of best practice and investigates to what extent these are used in foreign direct investment promotion conducted by regional authorities. Organisation- and implementation-related elements are studied. The discussion aims to answer the question of how systematic Central–Eastern European regional investment promotion is, and what are the factors determining regions’ involvement in, and the extent of, promotion activities.

Design/methodology/approach

Discussion is based on an original survey of Central–Eastern European (CEE) regional authorities' investment promotion. The paper develops a measurement of regional authorities’ engagement in investment promotion – an investment promotion index (IPI) and using non-parametric, two-tailed Spearmans correlation test investigates the relationship between IPI and socio-economic conditions in the regions. Kruskal-Wallis, a non-parametric test of difference is used to investigate statistical significance of differences in mean values between the three countries.

Findings

The analysis provides early insights into the relationship between regional development and investment attraction – the main theoretical contribution of the paper. Diverse levels of engagement in promotion are not influenced by the staple competitiveness factors of gross domestic product growth rates or foreign direct investment stock. Instead, it is conditioned by labour market situation in the countries studied.

Originality/value

Investment promotion relationship to regional development remains under-explored. The main focus of the analysis offered is the varying levels of CEE regional authorities’ involvement in investment promotion and its relationship to the socio-economic conditions prevailing in the regions. Exploring this relationship, the paper provides original contribution in the following two aspects: it establishes a systematic way of measuring regional authorities’ engagement with investment promotion; and it links the level of investment promotion to wider development of the regions.

中文翻译：

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中东欧地区外国投资促进和发展水平的强度

目的

促进投资日益普及，但其与区域发展的关系仍不清楚，且研究不足。本文的目的是结合场所营销和区域发展概念，以探索在捷克，波兰和斯洛伐克地区的投资促进。它确定了最佳实践的要素，并调查了区域当局在促进外国直接投资中使用这些要素的程度。研究与组织和实施相关的元素。讨论的目的是回答以下问题：中东欧区域投资促进的系统性如何？决定区域参与促进活动的程度和程度的因素是什么？

设计/方法/方法

讨论基于对中东欧地区当局投资促进的原始调查。本文开发了一种衡量区域当局参与投资促进的方法-一种投资促进指数（IPI），并使用非参数的两尾Spearmans相关检验来研究IPI与该地区社会经济状况之间的关系。差异的非参数检验Kruskal-Wallis用于调查三个国家之间平均值差异的统计显着性。

发现

该分析为区域发展与投资吸引力之间的关系提供了较早的见识，这是本文的主要理论贡献。参与促销活动的不同水平不受国内生产总值增长率或外国直接投资存量的主要竞争因素的影响。相反，它取决于所研究国家的劳动力市场情况。

创意/价值

与区域发展的投资促进关系仍未得到充分探索。提供的分析的主要重点是中东欧地区当局参与投资促进的程度不同，及其与该地区盛行的社会经济状况的关系。探索这种关系，本文在以下两个方面提供了原创性的贡献：它建立了一种系统的方法来衡量区域当局对投资促进的参与；它将投资促进水平与该地区的更广泛发展联系起来。