Science and technology parks (STPs) are non-spontaneous agglomerations aimed at
encouraging the formation and growth of on-site technology and knowledge-based frms.
STPs have difused worldwide, attracting signifcant, and often public, investment. However, there are contrasting evidence and insights on the efectiveness of these local development, technology and innovation policy tools. This paper provides a comprehensive and
systematic review of the STP literature (221 papers, 1987–2021), focusing especially on
quantitative papers aimed at assessing the park efect on tenant’s performance. We perform an in-depth quantitative analyses, which allows us to go beyond the inconclusiveness
reported in previous review papers, showing that the likelihood of fnding positive STP
efects increases considerably with sample size. We discuss the limitations of this literature
and ofer some suggestions for future research.