The economic value of olive plantation in rural areas. A study on a hill region between Italy and Slovenia

This study was undertaken with the primary purpose of assessing the welfare gain to local residents resulting from olive trees. A secondary but important aim was to underline the multifunctional role of olive farming. In fact, we know that olive plantation has potentially socially benefits. In particular, it has potentially a lot of positive social effects in rural areas depending on plantation characteristics and farming practices. Therefore, the first section of this paper reviews the main features connected to the multifunctional role of olive farming. Multifunctional role of olive farming is well known in the EU, but it is still needed the institutional intervention in favour of farmers, due to the structural difficulties of olive production sector. Later sections concentrate on a survey carried out in order to estimate the economic value of the rural landscape, focusing in particular on olive trees in a hill region between Italy and Slovenia. From the conducted survey we gauged citizens’ WTP to introduce olive trees in the landscape. Survey data was collected by means of questionnaires. We applied the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) in order to assess the citizens’ Willingness To Pay (WTP) for specific rural landscape features. The paper ends with some conclusions about the positive results obtained in olive plantation valuation questions