RIL - The Regional Index of Looseness

The Regional Index of Looseness

Measuring Tight and Loose Cultures across NUTS 2 Regions

The Regional Index of Looseness (RIL) is a novel, data-driven measure of cultural tightness and looseness at the subnational (NUTS-2) level across Europe. It captures the extent to which social norms are strongly enforced or flexibly interpreted within regions, providing a nuanced understanding of cultural variation beyond national averages.

Cultural tightness-looseness refers to the strength of social norms and tolerance for deviant behavior. Tight cultures are characterized by high norm conformity and strong enforcement, whereas loose cultures display greater heterogeneity and permissiveness.

Why a Regional Index?
Existing measures of cultural tightness and looseness are predominantly national. However, European countries exhibit substantial internal heterogeneity. The RIL addresses this limitation by offering a regionally disaggregated measure, enabling more precise analysis of cultural influences on behavior, governance, and policy outcomes.

Key Contributions

First regional (NUTS-2) measure of cultural looseness in Europe
Distinction between horizontal and vertical dimensions
Methodologically robust approach based on ordinal dispersion
Empirical applications to public health behavior and compliance

Full paper at the link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40797-026-00382-5

Defining and Measuring Tight and Loose Cultures Across NUTS-2 Regions: The Regional Index of Looseness - Italian Economic JournalThis study introduces the Regional Index of Looseness (RIL), a novel measure of cultural tightness-looseness computed at the NUTS-2 regional level for European countries. We distinguish between horizontal and vertical looseness, grounded respectively in interpersonal norm flexibility and attitudes toward supraordinate authority, and construct the index using dispersion in ordinal responses with data from the European Values Study. Methodologically, we employ an index of ordinal variation that avoids the limitations of the standard deviation when applied to Likert-type scales. We validate the RIL by comparing it with existing national-level tightness-looseness measures and by examining its association with other cultural constructs. Finally, we propose two exploratory applications (vaccination attitudes and compliance with non-pharmaceutical interventions during COVID-19) to illustrate how regional looseness correlates with public health behaviors. The results highlight substantial within-country heterogeneity and demonstrate the usefulness of regional cultural measures for understanding behavioral responses to collective risks.