AccScience Publishing / IJPS / Volume 9 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.36922/ijps.393
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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Local population changes as a spatial varying multiscale process: The Italian case

Federico Benassi1* Massimo Mucciardi2 Gerardo Gallo3
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1 Department of Political Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Via Leopoldo Rodinò 22, Naples, Italy
2 Department of Cognitive Science, Education and Cultural Studies, University of Messina, Via Bivona Bernardi 3, Messina, Italy
3 Department for Statistical Production, Directorate of Population Statistics, Social Surveys and Permanent Population Census, Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), P.zza Guglielmo Marconi 26/C, Rome, Italy
IJPS 2023, 9(1), 1–10; https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.393
Submitted: 13 October 2022 | Accepted: 8 February 2023 | Published: 27 February 2023
© 2023 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

The population dynamics in Italy show a strong spatial heterogeneity within a framework of persistent demographic territorial disparities. From a local point of view, it is necessary to understand what demographic determinants govern this process. In the paper, we model the population change according to a local (i.e., spatial varying coefficients) multiscale approach. To this aim, local demographic growth rates of each Italian municipality for the period 2011 – 2019 were estimated and modeled by means of a classic a-spatial global model (i.e., ordinary least-square), and a multiscale geographically weighted regression. The multiscale dimensions of local population changes are therefore analyzed by means of three sub-dimensions: Level of influence, scalability, and specificity. The results show that the determinants of local population changes are not spatially constant and that they vary in their effect at different geographical scales.

Keywords
Spatial demography
Local approach
Spatial varying coefficients
Multiscale geographically weighted regression model
Italy
Funding
None.
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Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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International Journal of Population Studies, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8606 Print ISSN: 2424-8150, Published by AccScience Publishing