The digitization of work and opportunities for inland areas

This work was commissioned to IRPET by the Tuscany Regional Directorate “Productive Activities” as part of the Interreg Europe Project “EDIN – European Digital Nomads.” Processing and text were edited by Sabrina Iommi and Francesco Viviani. Donatella Marinari collaborated in setting up the direct survey and counting the data. The work pertains to the Local Systems, Culture and Tourism Area, coordinated by Sabrina Iommi.

The objective of this report is to analyze how the digitization of work fosters the emergence of new lifestyles and consumption patterns and how these may translate into more favorable residential preferences for inland areas.

These are still partly emerging phenomena, many of which get high visibility in the media, but about which the scientific literature is scarce and often contradictory. Even with these limitations, however, it is undeniable that technological progress, driven at times by extreme and unforeseen events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, has profoundly innovated the way some daily activities are carried out, from work services, in some cases rendered remotely from the company headquarters, to the way of accessing some PA services (think of remote accesses through SPID), to those finally of carrying out some consumption. Examples for the latter case are numerous, from homebanking services, to shopping online (e-commerce) and distributed through a network of couriers making home deliveries, from cultural consumption on online platforms, to online booking of travel and vacation accommodations, and more.

Digital accessibility makes it possible to overcome time (office opening hours) and space constraints (no need to physically travel to the office) that were previously very stringent and blurs the line between work and leisure activities, with both positive and negative effects. The former include greater freedom in adjusting work time to one’s life needs and in choosing the place of residence (or even vacation) most akin to one’s preferences, thus in essence an improvement in one’s work-life balance; the latter include the risks of overwork and stress related to the greater pervasiveness of work duties.

Among the many interesting aspects of the innovations resulting from the digitization of work, this report focuses on the issue of locational choices, investigating in particular the possibility that some inland areas, thanks to specific factors of attraction linked above all to the quality of life (environmental and landscape quality, intensity of social relations, low settlement costs), may benefit from these new workers and travelers. The theme is investigated with a plurality of tools, from the literature review (Chapter 1) to the consultation of data from an international site dedicated to the phenomenon of digital nomadism (Chapter 2), from the construction of an index of potential attractiveness for Tuscan municipalities (Chapter 3), to a direct survey of a sample of workers residing in different Italian regions (Chapter 4), to the analysis of the applications collected by the recent regional call for the promotion of transfers of residence in the small mountain municipalities of Tuscany (Chapter 5).

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