Action research and participatory decision-aid models in rural development: The experience of “Terre Locridee” local action group in Southern Italy

The increasing involvement of local stakeholders in planning processes implies the decentralization of decisional power through participatory activities which make it possible to define development strategies that take into account a wide variety of perspectives. This paper, in the context of Action Research, focuses on the planning process of a Local Action Plan (LAP) within the Leader Axis that involves stakeholders from 36 municipalities belonging to the “Locride” area, in Southern Italy. At the basis of the LAP is the principle of consultation and cooperation between public and private actors, in order to identify common paths of development, thus activating the latent potential of the territories and leveraging the real knowledge of local actors on the issues of the areas designated for intervention. In such a context, a decision-aid model based on a multicriteria method and a convergence process was used in order to control the escalation of conflicts that arose among different stakeholders in the identification of shared thematic areas to be included in the LAP. The results show that the conflicts were effectively managed, and that the main drivers commonly chosen for the development of the territory combine interventions related to the fields of agro- food and artisan products, the social context, and the historical and environmental landscape.