Team Scotland's Export Promotion Support: evaluation

7. Impacts: additionality

7.1 The following impacts were found on average:

58% of exporters reported a positive impact of the support

39% attributed achieved export sales to the support

Firms attribute c. 41% of their export sales value to the support

57% anticipate their export sales to increase over the next three years.

7.2 Bringing this all together and scaling up to the 2,118 firms that the survey can be said to be representative of, this yields the following estimated impact, with £1.6bn of exports achieved and a further £2.7bn anticipated. These figures would be higher if the findings were apportioned to the full cohort of 3,053 supported firms over the period – this is not possible due to statistical sampling and its reliance on respondents opting in to be surveyed.

7.3 A mixed method approach was adopted to allow for more robust and precise econometric analysis to be undertaken, based on self-reported export sales over time compared with non-beneficiaries. A variety of econometric techniques were applied, but the "staggered difference-in-differences" approach was considered the most suitable for this analysis. Analysis was conducted of 310 firms over eight years (2015-2022): 175 beneficiary and 135 non-beneficiary firms. Non-beneficiary firms are a suitable control group: they tend to be larger and older, but firm differences diminish when controlling for other characteristics and they are less evident prior to the support period.

7.4 Findings show that export support has led to an increase in firms' value of exports of 140%, so that, if a firm reported international sales of £2.4m, the evidence is that without support, only £1m would have been achieved. Positive impacts were found across all yearly cohorts, and this increased over time. Econometric analysis is also planned using administrative datasets to assess turnover and employment impacts – these do not rely on self-reported outcomes which rely on a degree of subjectivity. These estimations will be published in due course.

7.5 Given that 58% of exporting firms reported some impact of support and only 60% of surveyed firms exported, taken together this suggests that these impacts, which appear highly positive, were achieved with a minority of firms. It will be important for the Scottish Government and partners to better understand this, and, potentially, to improve the targeting of firms. However, as previously mentioned, it must be considered that the period included both EU exit and the pandemic – over 90% of respondents reported that these had caused them challenges in exporting and firms who are preparing to export may achieve internationalisation in future. Furthermore, business support, like some forms of private sector portfolio investment, is likely to achieve different outcomes with different firms, so realistically not all supported firms will successfully export.