Understanding regional readiness to contribute to the bioeconomy: The role of higher education institutions and other regional characteristics
研究了德国401个地区，发现农村地区有潜力，区域准备度与跨区域网络嵌入和环保态度相关，高等教育机构通过教育而非研究提升准备度。
The transformation from a fossil-based economy toward the bioeconomy offers a promising avenue for addressing various Sustainable Development Goals but also poses a major societal challenge (SC). Designing effective place-based innovation policies to tackle this SC requires acknowledging that regions differ in their readiness to contribute to the bioeconomy transformation and understanding which place-specific characteristics underpin this readiness. This study was conducted to identify regional characteristics—capturing regional capabilities and resources, network embeddedness, institutional configurations, as well as higher education institutions (HEIs) and the research landscape—that are robustly correlated with regional readiness. We paid particular attention to the role of HEIs because they possess unique capacities to contribute to innovation and transformation. Taking Germany as an example, we measured the regional readiness of the 401 German NUTS-3 regions using the RE-SCORE index and employed Bayesian model averaging to assess the robustness of 55 potential predictor variables. Our findings highlight the potential of rural regions and further show that regional readiness is associated with embeddedness in interregional networks and the prevalence of pro-environmental attitudes. HEIs were found to enhance regional readiness through education rather than research. Relevant research output is generated by research institutes. The results suggest that HEIs can help rural regions leverage their potential.