## Exploring the Impact of different Policy Choices on the Rural Attractiveness of the PoliRural Pilot Regions

The ultimate purpose of the Rural Attractiveness Explorer is to support general groups of users in interpreting the future impacts of different policy strategies on the rural attractiveness of a region. Knowing about likely consequences of different policy interventions, stakeholders will be better equipped to make adequate decisions on actual rural development policies.

Ideally, the Rural Attractiveness Explorer would allow users to draft various so-called “scenarios”, which are settings that simulate different policy measures, of their own choice and compare the development of rural attractiveness under these different scenarios. However, the Rural Attractiveness Explorer is still at an experimental stage and does not feature such an advanced functionality, yet.

However, the team behind the Rural Attractiveness Explorer has developed a set of predefined policy scenarios to allow users to already explore and compare the impact of a couple of policy options on the rural attractiveness of the PoliRural pilot regions. Thus, the tools below allow the user to compare the impact of different scenarios in each of three domains, for a single region, both on the overall Index of Rural Attractiveness and on its sub-indices. The scenarios simulate the following policy options):

- In the domain of infrastructure development:

- Business as usual: no policy interventions happen, everything continues as is.
- Investment into broadband only: All investment is directed to improving broadband coverage.
- Investment into roads only: All investment is dedicated to constructing new roads.
- Investment into broadband & roads: 50 % of investments are directed to improving broadband coverage and 50 % are dedicated to constructing new roads.

- In the domain Agriculture policy:

- Business as usual: no policy interventions happen, everything continues as is.
- Investment only into the agric. information & knowledge system (AKIS): All investment is directed to improving the AKIS.
- Investment only into eco-schemes: All investment is directed into the implementation of eco-schemes.
- Investment into AKIS & Eco-Schemes: 50 % of investments are directed to improving the AKIS, 50 % are directed to implementing eco-schemes.

- In the domain Support to Entrepreneurship:

- Business as usual: no policy interventions happen, everything continues as is.
- High rate of support to entrepreneurs: High investment in measures to support enterprises.
- Medium rate of support to entrepreneurs: Medium investment in measures to support enterprises.
- Low rate of support to entrepreneurs: Low investment in measures to support enterprises.

These scenarios are designed for demonstration purposes as well as to allow users to understand how single policy measures play out. They are not meant to reflect any realistic policy strategies, which would include packages of different measures and more nuanced approaches.

‘Disc’ visualization of impact of different options on RA and its sub-indices for each domain

##### ‘Data-race’ visualization of impact of different options on RA and its sub-indices for each domain