| Abstract: |
Wilderness protection is a growing necessity for modern societies, and this is
particularly true for areas where population density is extremely high, as for
example Europe. Conservation, however, implies very high opportunity costs. It
is thus crucial to create incentives to efficient management practices, to
promote benchmarking and to improve conservation management. In the present
paper we propose a methodology based on Data Envelopment Analysis, DEA, a non
parametric benchmarking technique specifically developed to assess the
relative efficiency of decision-making units. In particular, the objective of
the discussed methodology is to assess the relative efficiency of the
management units of the protected area and to indicate how it could be
improved, by providing a set of guidelines. The main advantage of this
methodology is that it allows to assess the efficiency of natural parks’
management not only internally (comparing the performance of the park to
itself in time) but also by external benchmarking, thus providing new and
different perspectives on potential improvements. Although the proposed
methodology is fairly general, we have applied it to the context of Italian
National Parks in order to produce a representative case study. Specifically,
the choice of adequate cost and benefit indicators is a very important and
delicate phase of any benchmark analysis. For this purpose, a questionnaire
was used to investigate the opinions of Italian National Parks managers and
stakeholders and to define the relevant indicators for the analysis. Finally,
relevant policy implications for the case study are given. |