The prevailing characteristics of places set the context for their resilience to economic shocks. These properties shape the capacity of a region to react to changing circumstances, often as relatively autonomous responses to economic shocks.  These characteristics include the five features that we emphasise: business, people, place-based, community and governance.

Alongside these important structural features the role of behaviour and choice also emerge as formative influences on how places respond to crisis. Resilience is shaped by the ability of individuals, organisations, and policy-makers, to learn and to adapt. Regions that are resilient to economic shocks appear to have learnt from their experience of past events, whilst those with less experience on which to draw are often impeded in their ability to respond.

The choices people make are highly contingent on a particular context and depend on the interplay of local, national and international forces; how people understand these forces to affect themselves, and the choices made by those around them and with whom they interact. Individuals, organisations and communities adapt to the economic crisis through making changes to their actions and behaviour.