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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 focuses on the state’s performance as an economic development catalyst.
The first question in this section asks respondents how much they agree that public and private financial resources are available to help businesses in Indiana succeed (see Figure 10). Please note that the terms "public funding sources" and "private resources" are clarified in the actual questionnaire.
Once again, all three potential funding sources rate near the midpoint of the seven-point scale, indicating that respondents are neither especially enthusiastic nor especially negative about the availability of funding resources. However, the availability of "sufficient private sources in Indiana" is significantly lower than in 2009.
Trends to these questions can be seen in Figure 11.
As can be seen from Figure 11, CEOs are being less optimistic in 2010 than even in 2009 about private funding. Concerns about public funding remain relatively flat. Questions about public funding were not asked in the 2007 survey.
The next question of this section (Q9) addressed executive perceptions of the state’s effectiveness in encouraging business growth, attracting business to the state and retaining business in the state. Results from this question appear in Figure 12.
"Attract businesses to the state" is rated at about the same level as last year indicating a slightly positive perception of the state’s effectiveness in "selling" Indiana to out-of-state businesses.
Once again, very few respondents use extreme ratings – a "1" or a "7" – to describe the state’s effectiveness on these issues.
Trends to these questions can be seen in Figure 13.
CEOs appear to have been more positive in 2009 than in 2008 but now this trend appears to be reversing in 2010. The graph above does not include 2007 data points as these questions were added to the survey in 2008.
