DETERMINANTS OF ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY OF MALAYSIA: MODERATING EFFECT OF GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY AND GEOGRAPHICAL LEADERSHIP

Abstract

In the current competitive environment, the growth of the economy is created a big contribution in the development of any country. If it is not properly addressed, then the development of any country from the geographical perspective could be deployed. It was observed in the literature that Malaysia has several issues from the economic geographical growth perspective issues as compared to other countries. To address these issues, the current study objective was to investigate the moderating of geographical diversity and geographical leadership on the relationship of institutional factors (INF), space factors (SPF), geographical indicators (GEI), power factors (POF) and economic geography (EOG) of Malaysia. For this purpose, the data was collected from the 350 geographical planning employees through a survey questionnaire by using a convenient sampling technique which shows 70 percent response rate. The cross-sectional research design was employed and used the quantitative research approach. The Partial Least Square (PLS)-Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) techniques results had shown that all exogenous variables had positive and significant relationship with the endogenous variable. The indirect findings had also found that both moderating variables have significant moderating effect among all the exogenous and endogenous variables. This moderating effect could be considered big contribution of the study that could add a body of literature in the extant that could become a new area of research in future.