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.