ABSTRACT
Over the last decades, the political commitment to foster rural areas has led to a substantial reform of both the agricultural and rural sectors. The diversification of activities has played an important role in the development of the rural economy. On this stream, in Italy, the Law 228/2001, in regulating multifunctional farms, introduces the notion of agritourism to stimulate rural tourism, and create employment and income opportunities for agricultural entrepreneurs. Although agritourism is conceived as one of the fundamental instruments in fostering rural areas, literature does not examine the benefits brought by these farms on the agricultural sector, while major efforts are devoted to analyse the impacts on the environment, on the landscape and on tourism flows. Instead, we aim to study whether agritourism may constitute a key-factor in improving local entrepreneurship and, in wider terms, in fostering rural areas. Using data on subsidies and economic results of farms from a dataset which is part of the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), the chapter assesses whether there is a positive impact of agritourism and public policies on the economic activities of Italian farms by means of a counterfactual approach. In this way, we are able to produce differentiated estimates of the role played by the Common Agricultural Policy on both agritourism and “conventional” farms, and to understand how agritourism activities may be considered as a fundamental factor in supporting rural areas.
