Abstract
Despite the growing interest in social innovation (SI) in agriculture, the literature lacks validated tools for evaluating such initiatives. This paper provides an empirical application of the evaluation approach developed within the H2020 SIMRA project to a pilot experience conducted in a rural area of Southern Italy. The value added by this case study is the application of the five types of criteria used by the OECD for the evaluation of development programs, which are commonly referred to as REEIS: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability. This experiment demonstrates the adequacy of the evaluation framework in identifying strengths and weaknesses of the initiative, according to a multifaceted perspective. The overall evaluation proves that most indicators fall under the high (48%) and medium categories (36%), and only few indicators are low (16%). The usefulness of the evaluation results is manifold. First, this evaluation highlights relevant arguments to support the communication strategy addressed at civil society, therefore reinforcing the civic engagement of the initiative, which is the distinctive feature of SI. Second, it supports project managers in addressing interventions to face emerging weaknesses. Finally, the evaluation provides factual evidence to policy makers to perform cost-effective analysis of rural development policies.
Highlights
Received: 31 December 2020Agricultural activities are one of the main economic and social drivers of rural areas in Europe [1]
This paper presents an empirical application of the evaluation approach developed within the Social Innovation in Marginalized Rural Areas (SIMRA) project, which is designed for social innovation (SI) in marginalized rural areas
Questions have been elaborated according to the scale value defined in the Manual of Evaluations [9]; some adjustments have been introduced in the case of indicators whose upper bound value was infinite
Summary
Agricultural activities are one of the main economic and social drivers of rural areas in Europe [1]. They provide essential business and employment opportunities for the vast majority of the rural population, playing a major role in local economies. This is especially true for economically marginalized and peripherally remote areas, where agriculture is one of the last remaining activities to contrast depopulation and brain drain. Bottom-up approaches are suitable to encourage the engagement of the local community, in order to tackle local and specific problems (e.g., depopulation, aging population, land abandonment, etc.) [3]. Murray et al [4] defines
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