Impact of Local Economic Activity Zones on Socio-Economic Development of Rural Areas

One of the most important concepts in rural geography is the multifunctional development. In this concept, the postulated increase in the number of business entities is to lead to an improvement in the socio-economic situation. One of the ways to achieve multifunctionality may be creating local economic activity zones (LEAZ). They are created to stimulate entrepreneurship in local scale. The main purpose of the work is to determine the impact of local economic activity zones on selected factors describing socio-economic development of rural areas. The following research questions were posed: (1) In the communes after creating LEAZs, were the indicators of socio-economic development higher than the average in rural areas of voivodeship? (2) In the communes where LEAZs exist, were the indicators of socio-economic development higher within five years after the creation of LEAZs than before? (3) In the urban-rural communes where LEAZs work, were the effects more significant in the rural areas or in the city? In the research procedure, the index of average annual dynamics (the rate of change) and the Mann Whitney U test test were used primarily. The analysis shows that the average values of the dynamics in change indicators in the areas where LEAZ operates are higher or comparable with the average value for the rural areas. The study diagnosed the beneficial effect of the presence of large business entities in the LEAZ on employment growth in rural areas.