Regional economic structure and airport-centric development strategy formulation: The case of South Korea

Strategic positioning, in terms of the regional economic structure, is necessary to fully consider regional economic benefit in developing areas surrounding the airport. We propose a novel strategy formulation for an airport surrounding area development that moves the focus away from an approach focused on the airport toward an approach based on regional economic structure. The concept of comparative advantage and SWOT analysis was introduced by utilizing quantitative indices looking at the regional industrial ecosystem to enhance scientific analysis progress from the strategy building prospective. The proportion of inter-industry transactions, the degree of dispersion of inter-industry transactions, and the spill-over characteristics of local industries were developed into indices. Through the case study, we could systematically show that Incheon has both strengths and weaknesses in terms of the current absolute volume of transactions, opportunities in terms of demand factors and spill-over effect, but faces threats with regards to the regional industrial structure. The availability of the methodology was verified and a new concept of the airport economic impact zone has been proposed.