This study aims to analyse how regions benefit from developing urban agriculture into the research and innovation smart specialisation strategy (RIS3). To this end, the socio-economic structural variables employed by the EU to design regional RIS3s were analysed from a sample of 100 European regions. A binary logistic regression revealed that a population over the age of 65 is a key factor in developing urban agriculture, and an increase of 1% in this age group could lead to a 72.75% increase in urban agriculture. Then, an ANOVA showed that regions benefit from developing urban agriculture as part of the RIS3 in the promotion of active ageing and diversification, in alleviating the pressure of urbanisation on city resources, and in the development of technology, patents in mechanical engineering, creativity and new ideas, improving governance and increasing their social capital. Methodologically, socio-economic structural variables were reduced from 42 to 24 with shortest and simple instruments capturing the most important information, easier to manage and work with. It is concluded that lagging and leading regions benefit from the development of UA into RIS3.
