Lívia Madureira

Farm models and economic valuation in the context of multifunctionality: a review of approaches from France, Germany, The Netherlands and Portugal

Multifunctionality of Agriculture (MFA) is a concept that supports the recognition of complex interdependencies between different resources, production processes and outputs of agricultural land use. Political decision making within a sustainable development frame requires extensive information about these interrelationships in order to analyse the impact of implemented policies and to assess future policy effects. This paper presents selected results of the EU FP6 supported MultAgri project, such as a comparative overview of models, techniques and tools that have been applied to the assessment of various agricultural outputs. In detail, multidimensional modelling tools and economic valuation instruments have been inspected and valuated. Examples from France, Germany, The Netherlands and Portugal – the countries reviewed within the MultAgri workpackage 3 – are used to highlight specific instrumental strengths and weaknesses. Conclusions are drawn with respect to further methodological research needs on multifunctionality of agriculture.

Protesting or Justifying? A Latent Class Model for Contingent Valuation with Attitudinal Data

This article develops a latent class model for estimating willingness-to-pay for public goods using simultaneously contingent valuation (CV) and attitudinal data capturing protest attitudes related to the lack of trust in public institutions providing those goods. A measure of the social cost associated with protest responses and the consequent loss in potential contributions for providing the public good is proposed. The presence of potential justification biases is further considered, that is, the possibility that for psychological reasons the response to the CV question affects the answers to the attitudinal questions. The results from our empirical application suggest that psychological factors should not be ignored in CV estimation for policy purposes, allowing for a correct identification of protest responses.

Using Public Preferences to Weight Species Prioritization Criteria in Conservation Decision Making: A Case Study to Explore Potential Strengths and Weaknesses

ABSTRACT The conservation of biodiversity depends on the implementation of policy with limited financial resources. Due to this shortage of resources, conservation activities must be prioritized so that scarce funds are used rationally to prevent long-term biodiversity loss. To assure funding continuity, since it is the public that pays a significant part of conservation costs, it is imperative that managers and policymakers apply limited conservation funds in a way that makes people feel that their concerns about biodiversity loss are addressed. Here we argue for public preferences to be incorporated in species conservation decision making through criteria weighting. Public preferences were analyzed in two different contexts (abstract vs. concrete) to understand how stable public preferences are across different elicitation procedures. Our results show some resilience in criteria ranking, with functional importance being considered as the top criterion across different ways of questioning.

Networking as Multi-Purposed Tool for Innovative Organizations in Rural Areas

This paper builds on the findings of a survey to the innovative organizations located in Portuguese rural areas. This survey has been underlined and applied in the context of the project RUR@L INOV. The paper has two goals: to explore how networking is used by rural-based organizations and, second, to discuss how networking could be promoted by public policy to boost collaborative innovation. The evidence presented and discussed indicates that networking is used by rural-based innovators as a multi-purposed tool including the establishment of networks to obtain scale/scope effects and/or access local, mostly intangible, resources of rural areas. However, conventional innovation networks, usually led by R&D units or top-associations dont appear as a significant resource for most of the innovators. Probably, due to the organizations smallness, the high qualification of innovation leaders, together with their entrepreneurial attitude, these innovators search for knowledge and other resources by their own means and initiative. Nevertheless, this entrepreneurial attitude towards knowledge, information and skills demand could be shared by other, both existing organizations and new-entrants in the rural economies, through new networking models led by the innovators.