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Section 3: State’s Role in Economic Development
The third section of the questionnaire is closely related to the previous section and deals with respondents’ evaluation of the state in terms of economic development. The first two questions of this section ask respondents to rate the effectiveness of the state government in developing and retaining business in the state (Figure 9).9. How do you rate the effectiveness of the state government in developing business in Indiana?
10. How do you rate the effectiveness of the state government in retaining business in Indiana?
Figure 9 illustrates responses to each question for each response category. Though the distribution of responses to each question has a similar pattern, respondents rate the effectiveness of the state in developing business as being significantly better than they rate the effectiveness of the state in retaining business.
Surprisingly, there is no relationship between either of these questions and responses to three items from question #2: “relocation (outside Indiana),” “adding jobs,” or “reducing jobs.” In other words, how executives rate Indiana’s effectiveness in developing or retaining business is not related to their plans to relocate outside Indiana, add jobs, or reduce jobs. However, there are weak but statistically significant relationships between the effectiveness ratings and perceptions of Indiana’s relative advantages and disadvantages as expressed in question #5.
Briefly, those executives who rate Indiana’s effectiveness more positively are more likely to perceive relative advantages for Indiana compared to neighboring states in all areas except for the areas of education and cost of living.
The next question asks respondents about their perceptions of the availability of public and private financial resources to help businesses succeed (Figure 10).
11. Please rate how much you agree or disagree with the following statements:
a. Sufficient public resources are available in Indiana to help businesses succeed.
b. Sufficient private resources are available in Indiana to help businesses succeed.
Again, though the distribution of responses to each statement has a similar pattern, respondents rate the availability of private resources as slightly higher than the availability of public resources.
As might be expected, those who rated state government as more effective in questions #9 and #10 are slightly more likely to agree that sufficient resources are available in Indiana.
Question #12 asks respondents their relative agreement with a series of statements about whether the state has done enough to encourage business growth, attract businesses to the state, and retain business in the state (Figure 11).
12. The Government in Indiana has done enough to…
a. encourage business growth
b. attract businesses to the state
c. retain businesses in the state
Respondents clearly agree to a different extent with each of these statements. Specifically, respondents are significantly more likely to agree that the state has done enough to attract businesses to the state than they are to agree with either of the other two statements.
In short, executives agree state government is doing enough to attract business to the state, they are neutral in their assessment of the state government in encouraging business growth, and they disagree that the state government is doing enough to retain business in the state.
The final question in this section asks respondents to rate how critical each of several public policy issues are in Indiana’s future economic development (Figure 12).
13. Please rate how critical you believe each of the following is to Indiana’s future economic development.
Quality of life concerns top the list of issues critical to Indiana’s future economic development, with improving education the number one issue. In fact, 68% rate “improving education” a “7,” nearly twice the number rating the second most critical issue, “improving health care system,” a “7.” Section 5 addresses education in depth. The other top two quality of life issues are “having affordable cost of living,” the issue perceived as a strong advantage for Indiana in question #5, and “reducing crime rate.”
The mid-range cluster of issues includes “increase foreign trade,” “improve public transportation,” and “develop alternative energy sources.” Again, the foreign trade and alternative energy issues seem to be low on priority lists for individual companies but relatively high on the list of issues executives want the state to address. Interestingly, the average rating for “improve public transportation” does not appear to differ by region of Indiana (central Indiana versus outside central Indiana).
The relatively low-range cluster of issues includes “create cultural attractions,” “increase workforce diversity,” and “have professional sports.” While these three issues seem to receive attention in the popular press, they are perceived as being least critical of the issues presented. Two of these, professional sports and cultural attractions, have been identified as being important for attracting a talented workforce to an area so it may be a bit surprising to see them ranked where they are. Workforce diversity is one of the key areas addressed in the next section.
