Impact assessment of qualitative policy scenarios : a comparative case study on land use in Sicily

The purpose of this paper is to offer a contribution to the study of integrated assessment procedures for evaluating the effectiveness of agri-environmental policy strategies. While in the past the studies in this context have typically concentrated on the contents of methods in isolation, there is a growing trend towards methodological perspectives that support the linking of such methods. The focus here is on the combination of discrete multicriteria approaches used for handling qualitative information in a sequence of steps: the regime method, the evamix method and rough-set analysis. The first two methods will be used to obtain a ranking of four alternative scenarios of agri-environmental policies in a selected area of study, in this case, Sicily. The results obtained are discussed and re-analysed by using the rough-set approach as a recent meta-analytical tool. Finally, the analysis findings are applied to an investigation into the potential effectiveness of agricultural policies in promoting sustainable rural development in Sicily.