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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 6). 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, compared with last year, there has been a significant decrease in the availability ratings for public funding resources, both inside and outside Indiana. Interestingly, perceptions of the availability of in-state private funding resources have not decreased despite the current economic situation.
The next question of this section (Q9) addresses 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 7.
In 2008, "retain business in the state" and "encourage business growth" were both rated very near the scale midpoint of "4." Despite Indiana’s budget problems and the general state of the economy, both of these items are now rated significantly higher than last year. This seems to indicate that respondents notice some improvement in the state’s effectiveness on these two issues.
"Attract business 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.
There are very small, but statistically significant negative correlations between all three of these items and the importance of "growing the business internationally" from Q1. This means that the lower a respondent rates the effectiveness of state government in encouraging growth, retaining businesses or attracting businesses, the more likely the respondent is to think international growth is important. This relationship was not present in the 2007 or 2008 data.
