A Model for Assessing Regional Sustainable Development Based on the Index Method

Abstract

Assessment of development opportunities for socio-economic systems is particularly relevant in the context of constantly changing macroeconomic conditions. A retrospective analysis is an important step in assessing development opportunities at the regional level. Based on a presented model for assess-ing regional sustainable development, the article analyses statistical data of the regions included in the Central, Northwestern and Southern Federal Districts for the period 2005-2019. According to the concept of sustainable development, the indicators were divided into three subgroups: social, economic and environ-mental. The following results were obtained. Social indicators revealed positive dynamics in the number of regions developing sustainably until 2014; later, the number changed erratically every year, ranging from 21 to 38. Economic indicators demonstrated negative dynamics in the number of sustainable regions un-til 2014. In the period 2014-2019, an abrupt fluctuation from 13 to 32 units was observed. Environmental indicators show that, on average, half of the examined regions managed to develop sustainably. After de-termining the overall index, the rate of change of the index was identified. Then, a sustainable develop-ment matrix was constructed, where 1 means that the index value increased year-on-year or remained the same, and 0 means that the index value decreased year-on-year. The findings can be used for ranking re-gions by summing up values in the region’s row of the sustainability matrix. The study may also serve as a basis for identifying the relationship between various large-scale phenomena such as the economic crisis, pandemic, the development of digital currency markets and changes in regional sustainability indicators.