A Multi-Criteria Approach to Assessing PDOs/PGIs: An Italian Pilot Study

The paper contribute to the assessment of PDO/PGI schemes by building an approach to measuring the actual performance of the PDO/PGI products in relation to the objectives of the European Regulation 510/2006. This is done through a multi-criteria ex-post analysis that compares the performance of different PDO/PGI products with respect to multiple criteria. The research presented, based on a small sample of Pdo cheese products in Italy, can be considered a pilot study that develops a comparative evaluation of the performance of PDO cheeses: i) relative to the different objectives of the schemes, ii) by using a set of suitable and informative indicators that can help to evaluate the effectiveness of a wide number of PDOs/PGIs with respect to the regulation's objectives, and iii) by considering that different actors involved in PDO/PGI schemes may have different priorities with regard to the importance of different objectives in evaluating the performance of schemes.