Qualitative comparative analysis in assessing the competitiveness of municipal districts of the Chelyabinsk region

The paper examines the relationship between the competitiveness indicators of municipal districts and aims to form a model of acquiring competitive advantages by municipal districts. The subject of the study is the fuzzy relationship between the economic results of the development of these territories, represented by the indicator of consumer spending, and a set of factors characterising competitive advantages. The main research method is a qualitative comparative analysis, enabling to obtain combinations of factors that provide a given result of the territory's functioning. The hypothesis of the study is that the level of economic development of a municipal district is determined by a set of competitiveness factors. The study is based on the municipal districts of the Chelyabinsk Region. The article defines the choice of competitiveness factors, the resultant indicator and the method of qualitative comparative analysis for the construction of the target function. The authors set the limits and the range of each of the five factor variables, the parameters of consistency and coverage for each model, and verify the truth of the original model, characterised by sufficiently high consistency indices. They find that the minimum values of the output variables, which characterise a low level of competitiveness of the territory, are caused by the absence of large cities on the territory of the municipal district in combination with low transport accessibility, insignificant investment activity of the territory, the absence of resort and recreational areas. The obtained model explains the reasons for competitive advantages for 14 out of 19 municipal districts of the Chelyabinsk region. The practical implications include the development of recommendations for municipal and regional authorities to improve the competitive advantages of municipal districts and the development of guidelines and tools to support them.