Economic resilience, defined as the ability of an economic system to withstand external shocks and swiftly return to a path of equilibrium and growth, plays a vital role in reducing vulnerability. In the face of negative shocks, sectors lacking sufficient resilience may deviate from a stable equilibrium and experience a sustained decline in performance. Therefore, enhancing the resilience of economic sectors by identifying and analyzing its influencing factors has become a key strategy to counter instabilities.

The present study aims to investigate the impact of transportation infrastructure on the economic resilience of the service sector in 28 provinces of Iran over two time periods: 2001–2012 and 2013–2021. To measure resilience, the Han and Goetz index was employed, and to analyze the effect of transportation infrastructure, the Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) model was used to account for spatial heterogeneity.

The findings indicate that transportation infrastructure has a positive and significant impact on the service sector's resilience in all provinces. The business environment also has a positive and significant effect in all provinces. The variables of human capital and the concentration of industrial activities had a positive and significant impact in over 50% of the provinces. Economic diversification had a positive and significant effect in over 50% of the provinces in the first period, but this effect was observed in less than 50% of the provinces in the second period. Furthermore, the impact of government expenditure on the service sector's resilience was positive and significant in only 3% of the provinces in the first period and 30% of the provinces in the second period. Overall, the study highlights the paramount importance of physical infrastructure and institutional quality for resilience, revealing heterogeneous effects for other regional economic factors.