Rural tourism and sustainable rural development opportunities in Apulia region (Southern Italy)

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the public aid role in to multifunctional farms in developing the rural tourism, and the implementation in non-agricultural activities in the Puglia region. Concretely, by referring to the Rural Development Program 2007/2013, this paper offers an analysis to verify whether there is a solid support for public aid in agrotourism using a farm level data. After a policies and literature review on the role of the Local Action Groups (LAGs) for enhancing economic and sustainable competitiveness of rural areas, we present our case study. Statistical analysis and a tree classification method are carried out.