COVID-19 and regional resilience: Trends, priorities, and the geography of research

Abstract

The global economic crisis of 2008–2013 led to the emergence of the concept of resilience, which focuses on the ability of socio-economic system store cover socially, economically, and environmentally after external impacts. The COVID-19 pandemic spurred scholarly interest in regional resilience as a new conceptual framework for the sustainability theory. This paper aims to examine the influence of the pandemic on the trends and geography of regional resilience studies. We analyzed data derived from Science Direct and used VOSviewer to perform clustering and bibliometric network analysis. The countries that suffered the most from the pandemic and showed the largest regional socioeconomic disparities have become new centers of knowledge on regional resilience. Moreover, the pandemic has led to a visible shift in the research focus. Thus, after 2020, more attention has been paid to the structural and topological characteristics of regions that enable them to reorganize their resources more effectively in times of crisis. This study investigates the potential of the resilient development concept as a framework for gaining insights into the factors supporting regional adaptability.