Perceived social capital and institutional environment's impact on the success of regional cluster policies

Cluster policies (CPs) are said to be one of the crucial elements supporting the innovativeness of local and regional economies. However, what drives the success of CPs has not been made fully explicit. We tested the impact of perceived quality and strength of social capital (SC) and the formal institutional environment (FIE) upon CPs. We studied this relationship by applying structural equation modelling to data from quantitative CATI research on members of 20 cluster initiatives from four Polish administrative regions (NUTS 2), referred to as voivodships. We have revealed that the formal institutional environment has a strong influence on CPs, whereas, surprisingly, SC hardly matters.