Role of Local Action Groups in Improving the Sense of Belonging of Local Communities with Their Territories

Maria Elena Menconi, Sara Artemi, Piero Borghi and David Grohmann
Additional contact information
Maria Elena Menconi: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences DSA3, University of Perugia, 06100 Perugia, Italy
Sara Artemi: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences DSA3, University of Perugia, 06100 Perugia, Italy
Piero Borghi: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences DSA3, University of Perugia, 06100 Perugia, Italy
David Grohmann: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences DSA3, University of Perugia, 06100 Perugia, Italy

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-19

Abstract: The perception of the landscape by the population is one of the themes introduced by the European Landscape Convention. Perception is the key to the integration between human and territorial activities, and between economic development and sustainability. Local Action Groups (LAGs) are groups with territorial boundaries, established by the European Common Agricultural Policy for implementing local development strategies by awarding grants to local projects. The aim of this work is the development of a method for evaluating the ability of the LAGs to enhance the sense of belonging of the population with their territories. The developed method includes identification of those natural, agricultural, historical, and cultural resources for which people feel a sense of belonging, and evaluation of the same through a comprehensive multivariate statistical analysis. This paper reports the results of the statistical analysis of the rankings of local landscapes made by 330 residents of an Italian LAG on the basis of their sense of belonging with them. People showed that the community of the studied LAG does not recognize itself in the typical crops of the entire area, and the attachment to minor historical centres scattered in the territory remains the prerogative of the individual municipalities. The results of this method could be used as a performance indicator for a local plan, in respect to the creation of a shared perception of the local area.

Keywords: perception of rural landscape; multivariate analysis; community led local development; European rural communities; sense of place; visioning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4681/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4681/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:12:p:4681-:d:189112

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().