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Policy coherence is a complex and tough task for many developing nations because their capacity to examine and deliver evidence-based inputs to policymaking is limited, and policy dialogue platforms need to be effectively used. Resolving these difficulties is a critical requirement for policy consistency. As a result, the study focuses on the level of policy coherence for climate change adaptation (CCA), disaster risk reduction (DRR) and sustainable development goals (SDG) in Sri Lanka and suggests routes for policy coherence for Resilience. This study aims to investigate the coherent approach of CCA, DRR and SDG; to identify concerns in policy documents addressing the coherence of CCA, DRR and SDG in local context; and to propose policy coherence suggestions for resilience in Sri Lanka.

Methodology comprises a review and content analysis of 17 policy and legal documents in Sri Lanka and a qualitative study. The qualitative approach consists of semistructured interviews that obtained deep and broad expertise knowledge with ten government representatives and stakeholders. Both content analysis and interview data were analyzed by using NVivo.

It was discovered that there are several issues with the coherence of policies in Sri Lanka, including the fragmented approach, lack of integration, inadequate coordination, limited resources and lack of monitoring and evaluation. The policies are inspired by international frameworks, and local implementations are not focused, leading to inadequate implementation of policies. The lack of development cooperation for the use of innovative approaches, such as climate-resilient infrastructure and environmentally friendly solutions for CCA and DRR, further aggravates the situation. Another concern is the lack of land use management and responsibility for the development of physical infrastructure for DRR integration with CCA. It is found that there is a limited community involvement which is vital for the implementation of policies. Local implementations are encouraged to fill the gaps in existing policies/acts. The analytical framework of the study is based on a preliminary examination of policy documents, a review of the literature and discussions with practitioners. The framework reflects the current situation of policy integration which addresses strategic, conceptual, institutional, operational and financial coherence. The research suggests pathways for achieving policy coherence in CCA, DRR and SDG in Sri Lanka, such as enhancing the strategic coherence by improving goals to increase the coherence within CCA, DRR and SDG; improving the credibility of the unified approach for developing DRR and CCA risk assessments; intensifying institutional cooperation and stakeholder management; improving the common monitoring and evaluation; establishing implementation strategies; and increasing the community involvement.

The study on policy coherence in Sri Lanka recommends increasing community and professional involvement, conducting more research, developing a national strategy, increasing capacity building, strengthening international collaboration and fostering multisectoral collaboration. These recommendations can help improve policy coherence between CCA, DRR and SDGs, align policies with national goals and priorities and improve implementation effectiveness. By implementing these recommendations, Sri Lanka can address the challenges of climate change and natural disasters and achieve SDGs.

The study on policy coherence for resilience in Sri Lanka has practical implications, including improved coordination and resource allocation, increased capacity building, improved reputation and sustainability. By integrating CCA, DRR and SDGs, this study can help Sri Lanka become more resilient to climate change and natural disasters, achieve SDGs and become a responsible actor in the international community. These implications can contribute to a more sustainable future and ensure that development goals are achieved in a way that is resilient to climate change and natural disasters.

Increased community participation: the study emphasizes the importance of community involvement in the policy development process. This can help build trust between communities and government agencies, improve transparency and ensure that policies are developed in a way that is responsive to local needs and priorities.

Based on the identified existing loopholes in the policies and pathways to policy coherence, the issues in policymaking could be overcome. It could be used to establish strong linkages between policies based on CCA, DRR and SDGs to achieve long-term resilience.

It has been ten years since the policy was implemented, but the effect of the policy needs to be tested empirically. This paper aims to explore the mechanism of policy influence on regional innovation ability by measuring the effectiveness of policy by innovation ability indicators. Further, it reflects the problems in the process of the transformation and development of resource-based cities in recent years and points out the direction for the development of the cities in the future. In addition, this paper discusses the differences between regions and cities in China and seeks the path to narrow the gap.

This paper mainly uses the difference-in-difference method for the research. This study divided China’s resource-based cities and non-resource-based cities into experimental groups and control groups, and explored the effect of the transformation and development of resource-based cities and the changes of their innovation ability under the influence of the National Sustainable Development Plan for Resource-based Cities (NSDPRC). More carefully, this paper uses the fixed effects regression model, propensity score matching method, bootstrap method and other methods to improve the empirical results.

This paper finds that NSDPRC significantly improves the innovation ability of resource-based cities, although there is some lag in this effect. Research on the influence mechanism of policies shows that NSDPRC improves the marketization degree of resource-based cities and reduces the proportion of the secondary industry in such cities. Finally, the results of the heterogeneity analysis confirm that policies are more popular in western China and that resource-based cities in growth, maturity and decline are more vulnerable to policy influence. The development of policy effectiveness also requires the size of a city, and maintaining a healthy and reasonable scale is necessary for urban development.

First, the existing research on the development of resource-based cities is mainly from the perspective of economy and environment, but rarely from the perspective of innovation ability, and the index to measure urban development is relatively single. This paper will compensate for this deficiency. Second, different from the European and American countries that have basically completed the industrial transformation, the research on Chinese cities will provide a reference for the transformation of developing countries. Finally, from the perspective of resource endowment theory and innovation theory, this paper discusses the influence of SDPNRBC mechanism on the innovation ability improvement of resource-based cities, and further improves and enriches the theory.

The development of prefabricated buildings has become one of the primary solutions to transform the traditional construction industry around the world. Incentive policy is one of the important driving factors for the development of prefabricated building. The policy system in the field of prefabricated buildings needs to be improved urgently. However, there is still a dearth of research on how incentive policies exert impact on the development of prefabricated buildings. This paper aims to reveal the impact mechanisms of different types of policies on the development system of prefabricated buildings.

This study categorizes prefabricated building policies, constructs a system dynamics model of prefabricated building policies and conducts scenario simulations to examine the impact and sensitivity of different types of policies on the development system of prefabricated buildings.

The results show that compulsory policies play a greater role in the early stage of prefabricated building development and need to be withdrawn at the right time. Preferential and encouraging policies play an incentive role in the middle and later stages of prefabricated building development. Encouraging policies predominate in the later stage of prefabricated building development. Based on the research results, policy recommendations for prefabricated building development are put forward respectively from the government, developers and consumers.

The research results are expected to make up for the lack of clear policies paths in existing research and provide theoretical references for the formulation and optimization of future policies.

Policy for women's entrepreneurship is designed to promote economic growth, not least in depleted rural areas, but very little is known about the contributions of rural women entrepreneurs, their needs or how the existing policy is received by them. Using a theoretical framework developed by Korsgaard et al. (2015), the authors analyse how rural women entrepreneurs contribute to rural development and discuss the implications for entrepreneurship policy. This paper aims to focus on the aforementioned objectives.

The authors interviewed 32 women entrepreneurs in rural Sweden representing the variety of businesses in which rural Swedish women are engaged. The authors analysed their contributions to rural development by analysing their motives, strategies and outcomes using Korsgaard et al.’s framework of “entrepreneurship in the rural” and “rural entrepreneurship” as a heuristic, interpretative device.

Irrespective of industry, the respondents were deeply embedded in family and local social structures. Their contributions were substantial, multidimensional and indispensable for rural viability, but the policy tended to bypass most women-owned businesses. Support in terms of business training, counselling and financing are important, but programmes especially for women tend to miss the mark, and so does rural development policy. More important for rural women entrepreneurs in Sweden is the provision of good public services, including for example, schools and social care, that make rural life possible.

Theoretically, the findings question the individualist and a-contextual focus of much entrepreneurship research, as well as the taken-for-granted work–family divide. How gender and how the public and the private are configured varies greatly between contexts and needs contextual assessment. Moreover, the results call for theorising place as an entrepreneurial actor.

Based on the findings, the authors advise future policymakers to gender mainstream entrepreneurship policy and to integrate entrepreneurship and rural development policy with family and welfare state policy.

The paper highlights how rural women respond to policy, and the results are contextualised, making it possible to compare them to other contexts. The authors widen the discussion on contributions beyond economic growth, and the authors show that policy for public and commercial services and infrastructure is indeed also policy for entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to explore the rationale, the process and the outcomes and risks of place branding in rural China.

An in-depth case study analysis, including interviews, has been conducted.

Place branding in the case of China is practiced and dominated through administrative entities by using subsidies and regional development programs to coordinate, organize and promote local agricultural resources. Although this government-led place branding has effective effects on rural development, it is unsustainable and unstable because it lacks sufficient market and stakeholder participation.

The effectiveness of place branding in China has been examined and proved.

The government’s role in place branding in China should be adjusted. The government should position itself as a service and auxiliary role. Simultaneously, it should strengthen market-oriented operations and stakeholder participation in place branding.

This paper is one of the first contributions to examine the impact of place branding as a rural development policy tool in China, and the in-depth case study examines and proves the effectiveness of place branding in rural China.

This paper aims to test the causal relationship between urban-biased policy and urban-rural income gap and further examine the moderating role of government intervention.

Based on the provincial Government Work Reports and the long-term policy practice of implementing the target responsibility system, the authors construct a unique indicator of urban-biased policy in China. Further, applying the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces in 2003–2018, the authors explore the causal relationship between urban-biased policy and urban-rural income gap.

The results show that urban-biased policy has contributed to the widen urban-rural income gap in China, which supports Lipton's urban-biased hypothesis. Further research shows that the stronger the government intervention, the bigger the role of urban-biased policy in widening urban-rural income gap.

On the one hand, this study not only investigates the direct effect of urban-biased policy on urban-rural income gap, but also examines the moderating effect from the perspective of government intervention, which helps to enrich the relevant studies of urban-biased theory. On the other hand, the authors' findings provide the latest empirical evidence for urban-biased policy to widen urban-rural income gap and presents a reference and warning for China and other developing countries about balancing the relationship between equity and efficiency during economic development.

The circular economy (CE) has been endorsed as representing a model that is able to achieve environmental protection through decreased use of raw materials, together with changing economic values and social inclusion thanks to its demand for a wide variety of skill profiles. This has motivated many policy initiatives to support the implementation of the CE. The purpose of this study is to follow such policy initiatives in three geographically anchored industry-specific networks.

The study contributes to the research debate on the CE through a spatial approach with a focus on how the implementation of the CE is conditioned by spatial and regional contexts. The authors investigate three different networks in Sweden for CE with different locations and industrial profiles.

The findings reveal the difficulty that exist in relation to the implementation of the CE. The network and support functions in combination with private industry are vital. The risk of sustaining an uneven regional economic development is evident.

Although research on the development of the CE has proliferated, geographical approaches to this development are comparably rare to date. The authors seek to contextualise the strategy development and policy implementation of a CE policy.

This exploratory study discusses the policy learning process of the development of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy.

The paper discusses how DRR has and has not developed in Thailand through the two major disasters: the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the 2011 Great Flood. The information was collected by documentary analysis to gain a historical and critical understanding of the development of the system and policy of DRR in Thailand. Additionally, key stakeholders' interviews were undertaken to supplement the analysis.

The paper demonstrates that Thailand's DRR development has been “reactive” rather than “proactive”, being largely directed by global DRR actors.

Being a small-scale study, the sample size was small. The analysis and argument would be consolidated with an increase in the number of interviews.

The model can help deconstruct which dimension of the learning process a government has/has not achieved well.

The application of the “restrictive-expansive policy learning” model, which identifies different dimensions of policy learning, reveals that the Thai government's policy learning was of a mixed nature.

This conceptual paper aims to develop the vision of a novel policy tool called the digital industrial cluster (DIC) thought for a future context shaped by digital economies and Industry 4.0. The DIC departs from the industrial cluster’s precepts and take them into the digital agglomeration phenomenon.

This research uses a discursive and theoretical approach. To create a clear picture related to the research topic, this paper reviews the literature on how industrial clusters deal with digital transformation. The review takes a particular interest in industrial clusters, information and communication technologies, Industry 4.0 and policy tools for digital agglomeration.

The research develops the vision of the DIC as a new policy tool, building its foundations on both industrial clusters and digital economies; furthermore, the DIC was compared with other policy tools based on digital agglomeration to understand the similarities, differences and advantages of the former. Finally, this paper discussed where the DIC could find its way toward implementation and what externalities could be expected from doing so.

This research could be useful for policymakers and cluster organizations looking to deploy policy tools that take advantage of industrial clusters and digital transformation. Besides, the theoretical foundations presented could lead researchers to empirical identification of early incarnations of the DIC.

This paper develops theoretical principles for a new policy tool that connects industrial clusters, digital agglomeration and Industry 4.0 for the first time.

Small and medium contractors (SMCs) play a significant role in socioeconomic development. Their strong links with other sectors of the economy have a multiplier effect on any country’s growth. However, the construction business, especially for SMCs, is not an easy business as several roadblocks affect their sustenance. This study aims to examine the factors affecting the sustainable competency of SMCs emerging from the business environment in which the Ethiopian construction industry (CI) operates.

A literature review was conducted to identify 39 factors arising from five core sources (i.e. government policies, regulatory frameworks, industry networks, competitive bidding culture and construction technology and innovation). A questionnaire survey was conducted to gather industry stakeholders’ perceptions of the identified factors, and the results were analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Findings indicate 37 significant factors affecting sustainable competency arising from five sources, and the top factors from their respective sources were unfavorable financial policy; unfavorable economic regulatory framework; lack of trust between parties in the industry; inability of SMCs to compete with bigger construction companies; and poor linkages between CI and research and development institutions. Furthermore, factor analysis identified 12 components, and the top ones were competition and uncertainties in the supply chain; unsuitable bidding environment; and ineffective industry networks.

The findings will contribute to the body of knowledge on the factors affecting the sustainable competency of SMCs in the Ethiopian CI. They also indicate priority areas of competitiveness improvement and have implications for decision-makers.