Mental maps of entrepreneurs and location factors: an empirical investigation on Italy

The explanatory factors of firms’ location have been largely studied by the location theory, and by the large amount of empirical studies on the revealed locational preferences of entrepreneurs. On the contrary, the literature studying how entrepreneurs perceive places, that is to say, their mental maps, is quite limited. Actually, only one international line of research so far has really focused on the perception of entrepreneurs, defining an original methodology and applying it to the country-level case studies of the Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, and Italy. The present paper belongs to this line of research and aims to investigate the relation between the entrepreneurs’ perception of the NUTS3 Italian provinces as potential locations of investments and their socio-economic, spatial/infrastructural, environmental, social, and institutional characteristics. The research question in the present contribution is: ‘are the mental maps of entrepreneurs related to the provinces’ characteristics, and, if so, to which characteristics?’ To do so, descriptive statistics and an econometric analysis (OLS) allow exploring the relationship between the perception score (average rating assigned to Italian provinces), as stated by the entrepreneurs, and the main location factors, usually taken into consideration in the most relevant literature. The main findings highlight not only the significant role of economic and accessibility factors, as expected, and but also the role of some contextual factors such as the presence of the mafia, which is notoriously present in some areas in Italy.