Introduction

This chapter introduces the book and the fact that it is motivated by a belief that theories of economic development can move beyond the generally known factors and mechanisms of such development, with the aim being to analyse deeper and more fundamental causes of uneven development. In particular, influences such as innovation, entrepreneurship, knowledge, and human capital are widely acknowledged as key levers of development. However, what are the sources of these factors, and why do they differ in their endowment across places? This chapter indicates that the book seeks to theoretically argue and to empirically illustrate that differences in human behaviour across cities and regions are a significant deep-rooted cause of uneven development. Fusing a range of concepts relating to culture, psychology, human agency, institutions, and power, it proposes that the uneven economic development and evolution of cities and regions within and across nations are strongly connected with the underlying forms of behaviour enacted by humans both individually and collectively.

Human Behaviour and the Development of Cities and Regions

This chapter argues that the roots of behavioural theories of development relate to the interplay between cultural and psychological factors, with institutions playing a moderating role between intended and actualized human behaviour. It proposes that the forms of human agency associated with such behaviour are likely to impact upon urban and regional development outcomes. It introduces the role of power, and how this underpins the means by which agency facilitates institutional change. To connect the arguments made in the preceding sections, it sketches an emergent conceptual behavioural model of urban and regional development, and concludes that urban and regional development theories should seek to engage further with behavioural explanations as a means of understanding long-term evolutionary patterns.

The Nature and Sources of Agency

This chapter argues that constructs such as self-efficacy and innovativeness are closely associated with agency. This refers to the ability of individuals to make changes to their environment, and the chapter discusses that this is not just related to an individual’s own abilities and skills but is also constrained by their power relations. It is argued that agency can be captured both in terms of the ability to intentionally take actions to cause change or prevent change, or the actual actions themselves. Therefore, it may be best to think of the former as human agency potential (HAP) and the latter as manifestations of human agency, or human agency actualization (HAA), and this chapter considers measures of both. The chapter seeks to establish the links from community culture and personality via values and norms to human agency. It expands on notions relating to HAP and HAA, and empirically develops measures of HAP.

Agency, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation

This chapter explores whether community culture and personality traits are associated with entrepreneurial activities. It seeks to consider the importance of personality held at the individual level and culture held at the group level. This allows the connections between the foundations of the behavioural model of regional development—community culture and personality—and activities associated with the regional development to be explored. It further explores the extent to which human agency plays a role in determining the nature of entrepreneurial endeavours. Following an examination of behavioural micro-relationships at the individual level, the analysis then moves on to examine evidence of the relationship between human agency and differing forms of regional development. It focuses on traditional economic measures of development including GDP and unemployment, but also considers inputs and outputs from innovation and the entrepreneurial environment required to generate high-road regional competitiveness.

The Co-evolution of Culture, Psychology, and Institutions

This chapter empirically investigates the relationships that hold between culture, personality psychology, and institutions. The analysis recognizes that any relationships between these constructs are likely to be bidirectional, and therefore it is inappropriate to assume that one can be regarded as an independent factor that drives the others. The analysis examines those specific relationships between each of the three constructs to capture evidence for the existence of their intertwined nature. In particular, it focuses on how selective migration due to particular psychological traits can be associated not only with the psychological profiles of ‘exporting’ and ‘receiving’ areas but also how these patterns relate to the culture of the receiving areas and how they develop over time.

Agency, Economic Evolution, and History

This chapter argues that the type and nature of human agency existing within cities and regions at particular points in their development are significant factors explaining the capacity of these places to achieve economic transformation and renewal. In particular, it seeks to set notions of entrepreneurial human agency within wider and emerging theories of regional economic renewal and transformation. It is suggested that, while the configuration and capability of economic ecosystems—which are conceptualized through notions such as clusters, innovation systems, and industrial districts—determine regional development outcomes, at the micro level it is the role played by certain key human agents within regions that actually shapes the nature and evolution of these ecosystems. In other words, human agency is considered to be a primary driver associated with economic development and transformation, and should be viewed seriously when addressing the routes available to economically mature and underdeveloped cities and regions in their bid to foster renewal and transformation.

Addressing Unevenness

This chapter argues that the role of behavioural perspectives, encompassing culture, psychology, and agency, can provide new insights into the persistence of the long-term unevenness of development across cities and regions. A psychocultural theory of development builds upon person–environment theories that have previously sought to explain ecological behaviour across cities and regions rather than their economies. In particular, it seeks to facilitate a better understanding of the connectivity between upstream and downstream explanations of urban and regional development, and indeed the extent to which such an ‘upstream–downstream’ dichotomy is valid. Such a perspective should further provide an indicator of how and why behaviour-based policy intervention may impact on urban and regional development outcomes. It is argued that it is important to understand the motivations behind such policies, with governments potentially utilizing them to achieve the aims of a range of agendas, from shrinking the state to increasing their sphere of influence through the employment of ‘psychocrats’ who shape these policies.

An Extended Behavioural Model of Economic Development

This chapter establishes a more extended and nuanced behavioural model of urban and regional economic development and returns to considering what ‘development’ actually means and how outcomes can be measured. This reflects a move away from depending solely on traditional measures of urban and regional development based on Gross Domestic Product. Instead, the chapter investigates the outcomes for individuals in terms of their economic positions and also measures of broader satisfaction. To bring together the theoretical and empirical insights from the preceding chapters, this chapter turns to refining and unpacking the behavioural model of urban and regional development presented earlier, and propositions are developed from the insights gained throughout this book and incorporated into the model.

Institutions, Capital, and Network Behaviour

As a means of seeking to better understand and consider the deeper and less transparent drivers of urban and regional development, this chapter examines the institutional determinants of the innovation and growth capability and capacity of cities and regions. From the institutional perspective, cities and regions are portrayed as growth systems in which the availability of a range of capital and institutional forms play a key role in promoting innovation and growth. Having established the means by which the types of institutions and associated capital within a city or region impact upon its evolutionary development, the second part of the chapter argues that within any city or region the institutions concerning the networks formed by key agents will establish the framework for the distribution of power, particularly power that impacts upon the evolution and development of the economy.

The Psychocultural Life of Cities and Regions

This chapter seeks to explore the role of culture in relation to economic development in a place-based context, and secondly to examine the adoption of a more holistic perspective of behaviour at the regional and local level that considers specific configurations of human behaviour, which in combination influence the outputs attained. In particular, it combines theories of socio-spatial community culture and personality psychology into a holistic, spatially oriented perspective in order to identify distinct psychocultural behavioural profiles, drawing on an empirical example of regions and localities across Great Britain. This psychocultural behavioural approach is based on the interaction between the community culture apparent in these localities, which generates the social norms that influence the behaviour of individuals, and the personality traits of individuals located in these places.