The Analysis of Factors Affecting Farmers to Take Out Agricultural Insurance: A Case Study of Altinekin District, Konya Province of Turkey

Agricultural insurance is one of the management risk tools. This research aimed to analyze the factors affecting food crop farmers’ agricultural insurance in the Altınekin District of Konya Province. To obtain data using a questionnaire by interviewing 66 food crop farms entreprises who did agricultural insurance in the previous year. The population sampling was calculated with a single-stage non-clustered probability sampling. Factors affecting farmers’ agricultural insurance were analyzed by Binary Logistic Regression. The results of the analysis of factors affecting farmers’ willingness to take out agricultural insurance were farmers age, education, land size, sources from which they receive information on agricultural insurance, and the amount of support paid by the state, the amount of debt, pure product and agricultural income. The sources from which they received information on agricultural insurance had negative effect. The other factors have a positive effect. Providing education and advertising about agricultural insurance to farmers can increase the willingness of farmers to take out agricultural insurance. Support in the form of assistance on agricultural insurance of the government is also needed.

Barriers to Start and Develop Transformative Ecotourism Business

This article aims to fill the cognitive gap by providing evidence for different barriers hampering the innovative activity in ecotourism which concerns the promotion of the so-called transformative tourism concept. The research is devoted to identifying what are the most important barriers in the two areas: i) policy and regulation; ii) regional economic development. The observed absence of appropriate representative data for defining the state of the art in the field of transformative ecotourism as a new phenomenon is evident; therefore, it is suggested to use an expert survey for barriers identification in the field. The expert survey was done in the four post-socialist Baltic Sea countries/regions: Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the St. Petersburg region (Russia) in autumn 2020. Research results disclose the existing similarities among barriers in researched regions and highlight the key areas for improvement in policy and regulation and economy-related fields, aiming to create a more favorable environment for promoting transformative ecotourism as prosperous innovation of future tourism.

Visitors’ Happiness and Loyalty in the Moravian Wine Region

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tourists’ loyalty is more pronounced than ever. It is therefore inevitable to know what factors can contribute to the higher levels of loyalty among potential visitors. Since none of the previously researched factors are reflecting visitors’ feelings and emotions, and because wine tourism can build long-lasting emotional ties with tourists, this study focuses on Moravian wine region visitors’ happiness within the context of loyalty. Overall, seven loyalty factors influence the happiness indicators: quality of wine, relaxation, information about wine, natural attractions, friendly acceptance by the locals, wine culture and traditions, as well as vineyard excursions. Furthermore, this study also confirms the dependence the happiness perception has on visitors’ characteristics, such as gender, income, or with whom they visited the destination. The results of the study can be used to restart and support the development of sustainable tourism in the regions.

Community Acceptance of Wind Energy: Lessons from a Case Study on a Local Participatory Project in Pays Des Mauges (West France)

This article focuses on the community acceptance of wind parks in a rural territory in western France, in a country where they are not much developed yet. We hypothetise that their set-up stems from a specific pattern, embedded in the territorial rural context of the case study. Semi-structured interviews with 30 actors aimed to analyse this citizen-led project, in line with their representations of this territory and its sustainable development. Results show that citizen-led investment is not a prerequisite for community acceptance in this case. The sense of a rural place that is fit for technologies kept up to date by the green industry, and the fairness of the process, are the strongest drivers for acceptance of wind energy, in general, in this case. Subsequently, the confidence obtained from previous fundraising actions can foster new participatory wind projects. An early communication with inhabitants, and a construction fit for a rural development that makes sense to the locals can bring an essential sense of trust for energy projects within the community. However, given the different definitions, it seems also critical to assess their true community dimension in order not to jeopardise the sense of fairness if the outcomes are not largely shared.

Collaboration Perspectives Developing Sustainable Agriculture: The Case of Lithuanian Farmers

Sustainable agriculture and active collaboration between farmers are important concepts that have a significant impact on the development of sustainable agriculture, in striving for social and economic development, as well as supporting the reduction of impact to environment. Based on a systematic and comparative analysis, this study highlights the role of collaboration towards developing sustainable agriculture. The overall results imply that more active farmers collaboration requires more active sharing of experience, knowledge and information through meetings or seminars by creating an information portal or platform. These measures could lead to more qualitative communication, more open information sharing, mutual trust and risk reduction, which would ensure the development of sustainable agriculture.

Successful Management of Settlements to Boost Rural Development

The paper summarizes and provides and overview on the economic and social processes influencing and supporting the successful management of settlements, focusing on Hungary. The role of leadership and settlement management is inevitable in the everyday operation as well as in the definition and realization of development concepts and strategies. The basis of stable operation and development is the financial independency and stability, thus we need to call the attention on the importance of economic development functions of settlements as well as on the important role of mayors and leaders in the economic and spatial development. The approaches, the ideas as well as the way how the leaders think are all determining factors in development. Nowadays, settlement development and regional economic development raise such key issues that are also the main research questions in our paper, like „What does a good municipality/a good settlement look like? How can ‘good’ be described?” What are the main characteristics of a suitable leader in the case of settlements? It is known that there are no targeted trainings, courses for mayors/heads of municipalities to prepare them to be good leaders, there are no nationally or internationally acknowledged skills, competences that could be applied to select the most suitable leaders for the positions. Therefore, we believe that we must call the attention to this shortage and motivate the experts in public administration, the researchers and scientists, as well as trainers and coaches to cooperate and work on the solution. In this paper, through the dimension of leadership/management, we intend to discover the characteristics of successful community leaders and to focus on the importance of the activities of ‘local heroes’, who prove to have strong commitment to the development of settlements.

Rural Experiments with the Management of Basic Resources. Key Characteristics of European Ecovillages Aiming at Partial Self-Sufficiency in Water, Food and Energy

The goal of this paper is to provide a preliminary analysis of European ecovillages considered as rural grassroots experiments with the sustainable management of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus. The article presents empirical data on the management of basic resources in 60 European ecovillages collected with an online survey in 2020. The results show that a vast majority of ecovillages pursue some self-sufficiency in food, water or energy, and that 50% of them seek some self-sufficiency in all three of these resources. However, ecovillages do not try to be completely self-sufficient but rather aim at achieving feasible levels of self-sufficiency complemented with local and regional cooperation. While the role of ecovillages in driving conventional rural growth is limited, they can help in guiding sustainability transitions by illustrating opportunities and difficulties of reducing resource consumption of settlement units without reducing personal and communal well-being.

Residential Aspirations and Perception of Rural Youth of the Opportunities Offered By their Environment: the Case of a Spanish Inland Rural Area

This study explores aspects which influence whether young people decide to remain in a rural area or move away. Based on a qualitative analysis of 41 open-ended interviews with young people from a rural area of inland Spain, it especially examines the perception they hold of the opportunities provided by their rural environment for labour market integration. The results show that: 1) agriculture, the economic base of the area, is not perceived as a means of social and labour market integration; 2) a high degree of mobility between the village and the city is a necessary condition for young people to remain in a rural area; 3) promoting the natural and cultural resources of an area strengthens the feeling of belonging and identity.

Upward Transition of Indian Entrepreneurs: from Simple Working to Ethnic Entrepreneurship. A Case Study in an Italian Region

This paper explores the role of entrepreneurial orientation in addressing upward mechanisms of Indian immigrant workers in rural areas. To achieve this purpose, an empirical analysis was carried out to investigate how entrepreneurial orientation may affect mechanisms of professional transition. Precisely, we managed direct interviews among Indian workers (through the support of cultural mediators), local actors (like public and private advisors) and Italian entrepreneurs. Our funding suggests the presence of three Indian workers in Italy (simple workers, intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs), characterised by different entrepreneurial profile acting as engine or barrier to what we have labelled as “upward transition”. Immigrant entrepreneurs play a relevant role in Italy and in our point of view, it is of paramount importance to allow them to access to rural development policies, knowledge, training and education upgrading.

Rural Territories and Food Tourism – Exploring the Virtuous Bonds Through a Systematic Literature Review

Although studies on food and tourism have gained terrain within tourism research, especially in the last decade, the connections of food tourism with rural territories have remained underexplored. This is particularly significant in the context of an increasing recognition that food should be understood as a distinguishing feature of rural tourism destinations, at the same time as displaying specific heritage and traditions as and contributing to the development of rural territories. The intention of this article is to shed light on the connection between food tourism and rural territories by exploring its potential through a systematic literature review on this untapped topic. Based on 73 articles focusing on those connections, the paper reviews and further explores what is already known on the topic, examining the different research methodologies and approaches used, as well as the dimensions analysed and results obtained. Research on the links between food tourism and rural territories seems to be geographically marked and particularly relevant in Southern European countries (such as Spain and Italy), as well as in North America (mainly the USA). Impacts on local development, together with production and commercialization strategies, are the main dimensions analysed by the articles, revealing indeed some of the potential virtuous bonds deriving from the connection between tourism, food and rural territories.