Non Technical Summary
Many U.S. rural communities have economic development strategies that promote cultural amenities and performing arts to attract tourists and residents, and to improve community wellbeing. Despite the widespread use of cultural amenity and performing arts-based strategies, there is little research-based information about the ethnic and racial character of these place-making assets across U.S. regions. Also, there's a lack of understanding about their effects on rural economic development and prosperity.This project will fill these gaps with an assessment of the cultural amenities and performing arts activities of U.S. counties, with an emphasis on their ethnic and racial character, along with an analysis of their impacts on the economic development of regions. The study will use a new measure of the urban influence of U.S. counties to examine how the types of cultural amenities and performing arts activities vary across the rural-urban hierarchy, and to learn how the impacts of amenities and arts might differ across places.The project will generate two large publicly available databases: a county-level inventory of about 250,000 place-based assets (e.g., cultural amenities, performing arts) and county-level indicators of urban influence, which will complement existing indicators such as the USDA Urban Influence codes. Policymakers and rural development practitioners will use this information in local arts and economic development planning and benchmarking exercises, and other researchers will use this information in studies of rural economic development. Near the completion of our study, we will visit and share our results with economic development policymakers and practitioners, and leaders of local arts-based organizations. The project's ultimate goal is increased diversity of (and inclusion in) local culture and arts, and improved rural economic development.

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
609	6110	3010	50%
608	6050	3010	50%

Knowledge Area
608 - Community Resource Planning and Development; 609 - Economic Theory and Methods;

Subject Of Investigation
6110 - Economy of the United States and sectors thereof; 6050 - Communities, areas, and regions;

Field Of Science
3010 - Economics;

Goals / Objectives
The purpose of this study and future efforts that build from this seed grant-funded project is to leverage the place-making assets of rural areas to promote economic development/prosperity and support human diversity. Our objectives are to: (1) build a large-scale database of the cultural amenities and performing arts activities of U.S. counties, with an emphasis on their ethnic and racial character, (2) develop and implement a new continuous measure of urban influence for U.S. counties, (3) construct a wide variety of county-level indicators of economic development/prosperity and human diversity, (4) characterize the ethnic and racial diversity of community cultural amenities and performing arts activities, (5) explore the role of urban influence in explaining differences in cultural amenities and performing arts activities (and the ethnic and racial diversity of these place-making assets) across rural areas, and (6) analyze the effects of the "amount" and "diversity" of cultural amenities and performing arts activities on the economic development/prosperity and human diversity of rural communities.Based on the lessons learned while addressing these six objectives, a seventh objective is to assemble a project team of collaborators and partner organizations, identify sites for case studies and surveys, and set priorities for future research and outreach.

Project Methods
Techniques to be Employed: We will use standard data collection and cleaning techniques to build the database of cultural amenities and performing arts activities, and will match the addresses of these place-based assets to their counties of location using (for example) the HUD U.S. Postal Service Zip Code Crosswalk. To build the county-level measure of urban influence, we will use a VAR model and novel method for decomposing error variances into respective components. In the analysis of the diversity of cultural amenities and performing arts activities, we will use entropy measures of diversification and comparisons to a U.S. benchmark. The techniques used to examine the geographic distribution of cultural amenities and performing arts activities across the rural-urban continuum include descriptive analyses such as scatterplots and maps. To identify counties with an abundance (or lack) of place-making assets, we will analyze the residual of the amount of place-making assets relative to the amount predicted by a regression analysis. Finally, we will use the techniques of factor analysis and regression analysis to examine the importance of cultural amenities and performing arts activities to rural economic development/prosperity and human diversity. Factor analysis will be used to reduce the number of variables measuring cultural amenities and performing arts activities into a manageable number prior to conducting the regression analysis. The regression analysis techniques will include, where appropriate, spatial econometrics and methods to account for the potential endogeneity between the measures of regional economic development and prosperity, and the amount and diversity of cultural amenities and performing arts activities.Expected Results: We expect the project to generate a substantial amount of new information about the amount and diversity of cultural amenities and performing arts activities in U.S. rural areas. We expect to find large differences in these place-making assets across regions, with some clusters of communities having similar types of amenities. These differences are likely to be explained--at least in part--by a region's urban influence, heritage and history, and characteristics of the local population (including its diversity). We expect some of the cultural amenities and performing arts activities to be associated with some of the indicators of rural economic development/prosperity and human diversity. Finally, we expect to identify many communities and organizations that will make ideal partners for future research and outreach. How Data will be Analyzed or Interpreted: Data analysis will involve a variety of descriptive and econometric techniques. Given that results from this project will inform the selection of future case studies and survey research, the interpretation of some results will be "preliminary."Efforts to Cause Changes in Knowledge, Actions or Conditions: Results will be communicated using technical reports and data briefs, and via social media and YouTube videos. In year 2, we will present results at meetings and submit journal articles. In addition, we plan to visit 5 to 7 communities and/or organizations during year 2 of the project. During these visits, we will share results of the study and gather new information and feedback about cultural amenities and arts. The database of place-based assets and other county-level variables will be stored in a data repository and made available to others.The main project outputs are the seven activities (e.g., building the large-scale database of cultural amenities, meeting with community development and arts-based organizations) and the two products (e.g., publicly available database of amenities and arts, publicly available database of county-level urban influence). We will evaluate the impacts of the two products by monitoring the count of downloads and use by others. We will evaluate the impacts of the seven activities by monitoring feedback received from the stakeholder groups that we visit, and feedback received from our dissemination (e.g., social media posts, YouTube videos, technical reports) of project results.