Abstract

Perceived attractiveness at territorial level by businesses - that is, their image of Italy's territories as regards potential localizations of productive investments - represents a substantially «unexplored» field in Italy, particularly in the South. This paper shows and discusses the most significant results, related to southern Italy's regions and provinces, obtained from recent research on localization preferences of Italy's businesses, linked to a wider international research programme studying this topic in some European countries for some decades. The theoretical and empirical background of the international research pro- gramme, as well as the methodological approach to research and to surveys carried out in Italy, is explained; the results of the research are shown and discussed, in particular the overall results on southern regions and provinces' perceived attractiveness are explained; how homogeneous and geographically indifferent is South perception by businesspeople, that is, how they consider equally important regions and provinces, although these differ from a socio-economic point of view; the results disaggregated by type of business are examined; the gap in terms of perception is considered and then it is compared with the gap in real terms; finally, explanatory evidence, drawing from qualitative surveys, is investigated.