The resilience of the regional ecosystems: Healthcare-service organizations, public agents and communities in the times of COVID-19

Abstract

The aim of this study is to compare regional ecosystems' resilience in terms of their ability to contain the spread of Covid-19. This is carried out through institutional measures as well as through spontaneous community behaviour in order to preserve public health and the institutional actions to strengthen the health-care system in dealing with the pandemic. The discussion is framed through the institutional approach. We develop a twostep method. In the first step, regions have been clustered by considering the kind of response to Covid-19, in terms of formal and informal rules. In the second step a random effect panel regression analysis was performed in order to define the effect of the single response variable to Covid-19 on the resilience index over time. Implications for policy makers are then discussed. The first is that coping with a regional emergency requires taking into account regional specificities. Strictly imitative models risk being inconsistent with the characteristics of the area, resulting in outputs that are not homogeneous. The second involves social capital, which is crucial to the application of the norms. In regions with high social capital there is a sense of solidarity that presents itself in informal rules aimed at reinforcing the formal rules. However, there is no sense of conformity for the sake of conformance to the standard.