Wellbeing under formal and informal institutions: Envisioning barriers and drivers of digital service ecosystems in rural Italy

A survey collecting Likert-type perception data on institutions and innovation from two rural areas of Southern Italy was carried out to address a basic question in the New Institutional Economics, namely how formal and informal institutions can positively affect digitisation-based service ecosystems and their entrepreneurship networks in inner areas? Contributing to fill this knowledge gap, we inform evidence-based policy design and contribute to the theorization of integrated institutional dynamics. Results of a direct survey across more than 1700 respondents indicate that both areas investigated are often consistent across the evidence base, yet they reveal significant differences between municipalities and socio-demographic groups, and carry clear implications for policy design and local implementation of effective programmes in the domain of digitalisation-based service ecosystems. Context-specific, sometimes non-linear dynamics, shape entrepreneurship and service ecosystems in institutional peripheries in ways that require specific program calibration. Rural areas in Southern Italy seem to rest on robust social capital while facing clear and variegated gaps in hard-infrastructures and digital skills. The efficient achievement of policies oriented to digitalisation-based service ecosystem development may then hinge on formal-informal synchronized upgrades to physical and intangible infrastructures, skills, and on translating community strengths into digital adoption and digitally integrated proximity services—delivered through finely targeted, place- and group-sensitive interventions.