Factors of Investment Attractiveness of the Region in the Context of Sustainable Development

In modern conditions of globalization and competition, constant changes and uncertainty, regions face the need to attract investments to ensure the economic development of the region and improve the quality of life of its residents, modernize infrastructure, develop education and healthcare, and create new jobs. Considering that investments coming to the region should contribute not only to economic growth, but also to the social well-being of the region, the analysis of investment attractiveness factors becomes especially relevant and important and requires attention from government organizations, as well as the public in general, to ensure the even development of the regions. And, since everyone's attention is now focused on sustainable development, regions that actively develop social infrastructure, support small and medium-sized businesses, improve the environmental situation, and also have an effective management system and transparent business conduct are very attractive. This study is devoted to the analysis of the impact of sustainable development indicators on the investment attractiveness of the region. The Federal State Statistics Service of Russia (Rosstat) and the ESG-ranking of regions from the RAEX rating agency were used as data sources. It was found that the level of sustainable development of the region, namely the indicators selected based on the analysis of scientific articles and the ESG-ranking methodology, really affect the investment attractiveness of the region, for which the available data on investments in fixed assets were taken as a quantitative indicator. The econometric analysis showed the impact on the investment attractiveness of regions of such indicators as the position at the ESG ranking, environmental protection costs, the proportion of organizations that implemented technological innovations in the total number of surveyed organizations, the unemployment rate, the demographic load factor, the capacity of outpatient clinics.