experience increased employment levels despite the limited industrial or urban development of their lands since the local economy of protected areas depends on the preservation of their environment to generate not only revenue from tourism, but also tourism-related jobs for their residents (Jalani, 2012). Thus, despite not having a large number of firms around their area or a high rate of industrialization, residents can still have a wealth of opportunities to work and earn income through eco-tourism jobs.
V. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1. Conclusion and policy implications
This thesis investigated the spatial distribution of accessible jobs and employment, and whether there is a relationship between the amount of accessible job opportunities and a region’s employment levels. In accordance with the underlying assumptions of the spatial mismatch hypothesis, the results of the study reveal that access to firms or potential employers is a positive significant determinant of employment levels in the Philippines, even when controlling for location characteristics and population characteristics that could affect residents’ employability or labor force participation. The study also finds that high access to firms and high employment levels are mostly concentrated in Metro Manila, which again is consistent with the components of spatial mismatch. The presence of all three components in the study area confirms that spatial mismatch exists in the Philippines, particularly in the context of Metro Manila and its neighboring provinces.
Low employment is being addressed by the government primarily through the improvement of education and provision of skills training (Pantaleon, 2013; Senate of the Philippines, 2016); however, the findings of this research regarding the relationship of accessibility to firms and employment levels suggest that given the case of the study area, the problem is not the lack of an educated workforce, but rather the lack of accessible
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jobs or suitable jobs given their educational level. This shortage of suitable jobs makes workers want to migrate or travel to Metro Manila to find jobs. Thus, the problem of low employment in the Philippines cannot be solved merely by providing educational or skills training programs, as is being done in the present, since having a large number of highly-skilled or educated workforce would not be enough if there are no suitable job opportunities in the surrounding neighborhoods.
The unequal distribution of employment levels and potential employers between regions can be resolved through dispersed regional development in terms of job creation or investment (Pernia & Quising, 2003). Spreading development to other regions would help ensure that all regions will develop at a nearly equal pace, and having an equitable distribution of development efforts through dispersed regional development would also encourage firms or private partners to invest in provinces, thus creating more jobs. And when jobs are created in the provinces, the residents will have no need to commute or search far into the metropolis for work since there will already be suitable jobs that are nearer and more accessible from their places of residence.
The central government can encourage a more balanced investment and economic activity across regions by encouraging the implementation of decentralization measures.
Although the Philippines has a Local Government Code that gives local government units the power to create their own revenue streams and implement ordinances, the Congress still has control over local legislation (Cepeda, 2017) and budget, which hinders local government units from readily implementing projects. A larger share of internal revenue collection must also be allocated to the local government units since they are the ones who know the conditions of each area and thus also have the best idea on how to resolve these issues. Moreover, the central government could also attract businesses and firms to invest in other areas besides Metro Manila by implementing improvements in government processes and pushing for better transparency in government transactions
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across the country. If investors could see that a good business climate also exists outside Metro Manila, they could be inclined to consider these regions when making investments or starting operations. Not only would this improved business climate have the potential to bring in foreign investment, it would also make a positive impression with locals themselves, who would also be encouraged to set up businesses and in turn generate employment by hiring residents living in the surrounding areas to work for them.
To be functional, developed, and desirable to live in, a place must not only have housing but also amenities such healthcare, transportation, entertainment, education, and most importantly jobs and industries. On the part of the local government units, they can improve the competitiveness and ease of doing business in their respective areas (Department of the Interior and Local Government, 2017) to attract more firms and industries to set up operations there, and in turn to encourage more people to live in these areas. This can be done by improving or building infrastructure such as roads and public transport to enable access to more areas, and providing basic utilities especially in areas that they plan to develop into a job or a residential center. For the past years, the central government has developed a universal diagnostic tool for ranking the competitiveness of each local government via the Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Index.
Measures like this are good indicators that can aid local government units in assessing their area’s current strengths and identifying opportunities for improvement.
But although the results show that urbanization and industrialization are associated with higher employment levels, the positive impact of protected areas on the local employment-to-population ratio suggests that high employment can still be generated in rural or more distant areas if the local governments can determine and utilize the strengths of their village’s location. This means that local governments can identify a key characteristic or industry that they could use as competitive advantage in order to generate jobs in these regions: for instance, selected rural areas may be good for
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productive lands and may be suitable for large-scale agriculture, and still others may be more suited for industries making use of or specializing in local products and raw materials that could be found in their locations. The strengths and opportunities of these rural areas must be considered in order to drive development into these regions and in turn generate jobs, which would lessen inequality in job opportunities and encourage residents to stay in their provinces to find work.5.2. Recommendations for future research
There is a huge potential for expounding research on the spatial mismatch hypothesis in the context of the Philippines. This study only investigates the spatial mismatch mismatch regarding beneficiaries of government relocation programs is a timely topic to explore because of numerous issues and protests regarding the locations of the resettlement sites, which are outside the metropolitan area and far from beneficiaries’
workplaces in the metropolis (Department of Public Works and Highways & Metro Manila Development Authority, 2017). If highly-specific individual-level data on these groups are available, then looking into this aspect of the spatial mismatch phenomenon would be a worthwhile pursuit to consider.
Researchers may also consider the possibility of investigating the phenomenon per industry or occupational group and see whether workers of a certain industry experience a greater extent of mismatch over those of other industries. These types of studies may still utilize GIS tools like the ones used in this paper to map out the spatial distribution
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and clustering of firms from different industries. It is possible that firms belonging to a certain industry are clustered in a certain area, and workers who may want to work in these industries may have a more difficult time finding jobs of this nature because of their location. On the other hand, some industries may be more evenly spread out and people who may want to work in these industries may have better access to those jobs. A study that checks for mismatch in different lines of business is worth pursuing and could give more insight into the phenomenon as it exists in the Philippine setting.
In terms of methodology, the continued use of spatial regression is recommended for future studies given the nature of the phenomenon and spatial data, which tend to display dependence. The use of spatial regression is superior compared to other types of data analysis models due to its ability to account for spatial heterogeneity or spatial dependence between neighboring areas. Ordinary regression methods do not account for these tendencies and even assume that observations are independent of each other, which is not true in the case of spatial data. Finally, spatial regression is able to isolate the effects of spatial dependence or interactions, making the estimates more efficient and leads to better inferences.
Improving on this study’s methodology in measuring access to jobs is also a good way to expand knowledge on the topic. Due to data availability constraints, the measurement of accessible jobs was limited to the number of jobs within a catchment area defined by a specified travel time. Future studies regarding the topic could improve on this accessibility measure by getting the number of positions or job vacancies relative to the number of competing workers and accounting for distance decay, where nearer jobs would have more weight than jobs that are located farther away. Job seekers and workers typically prefer to work near their place of residence, and more distant jobs would be less attractive to them than jobs that are located nearer to their residential location.
Alternatively, if ample data is available, researchers could incorporate commuting costs
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instead of using distance. Higher transportation costs would discourage workers from commuting to a certain location to work, especially if the costs are higher than their current or potential wages. Improvements like these would significantly enhance the study of spatial mismatch in the Philippine setting since the excessive development of the metropolitan areas means that more costs that reduce the efficiency of workers such as transportation costs and time lost due to traffic jams may arise. Accounting for these costs would make the measurement of accessibility more accurate, since traffic or high transportation costs may actually reduce the distance that a worker or job seeker may be able to cover given his search intensity, and in turn, there may actually be a smaller number of accessible jobs given these frictions.
Finally, researchers may also look into other metropolitan areas in the Philippines such as Metro Cebu or Metro Davao. These areas are major metropolitan areas in their respective island groups, which means that they also experience high growth and also has a large concentration of firms compared to their neighboring regions. Given the results of this study confirming that spatial mismatch does exist in Metro Manila and its surrounding areas, it would be worthwhile for future studies to see whether spatial mismatch also exists in other major metropolitan areas outside Luzon. If spatial mismatch is found in these regions, public and private sector partners would be able to address these concerns early and plan urban development accordingly. Finding whether spatial mismatch exists in this regions will be a useful contribution to Philippine spatial mismatch literature because these areas are not yet as highly-congested as Metro Manila, and any necessary changes in urban structure or investments in infrastructure will be easier to implement in these metropolitan areas.
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