Protection from natural hazards is the most important function of mountain forests from an ecological, economic and social point of view. This assertion has been widely debated in recent years by a number of authors. In this paper we focus on the economic aspects of the protective function of...

Social capital is defined as the sum of interactions between both individuals and groups, which permit the development of rules, shared values, as well as cooperative and reciprocal links. This concept, developed by social science, can be applied as a support structure in decision making for...

Environmental assessment needs of Decision Support Systems (DSSs) able to consider several aspects in a unique analysis framework. The complexity of interaction among ecological, economic and political variables and a widespread lack of data availability lead to difficulty in bringing together...

The increasing importance of the carbon sequestration issue calls the researchers to investigate if the agri-environmental support (AES) to extensive mountain grazing granted under Regulations 2078/92, 1257/99 and 1698/2005 is still efficient. AES may have contributed to the maintenance of low...

Since their introduction in the early 1990s, genetically modified organisms in agriculture tended to emphasize improved yield. Europeans, perceiving unacceptable risk and too little benefit, resoundingly disapproved of GMO use in agro-food processes. More recently, research has turned to...

In recent years, concerns for potential risks on human health related to the overuse of chemical pesticides have encouraged research of alternatives production methods as integrated pest management (IPM) and organic agriculture. Consumer preferences for these practices or for new product...

Using a laboratory experiment, we investigate whether incentive compatibility affects subjective probabilities elicited via the exchangeability method (EM), an elicitation technique consisting of several chained questions. We hypothesize that subjects who are aware of the chaining strategically...

The investigation of hypothetical bias in choice experiments (CEs) has typically been conducted in the laboratory with only minimal field experiments. Moreover, it is common practice to provide an initial endowment (money or coupons) to respondents. In this research, we employed a...