The “Eco-Effectiveness” of Agritourism Dynamics in Italy and Spain: A Tool for Evaluating Regional Sustainability Belliggiano, Angelo Cejudo García, Eugenio Labianca, Marilena Navarro Valverde, Francisco Antonio De Rubertis, Stefano Agritourism Eco-effectiveness Rural development Circular economy Index Decomposition Analysis (IDA) Conceptualization, A.B. and S.D.R.; methodology, A.B. and S.D.R.; formal analysis, A.B. and S.D.R.; data curation, A.B. and E.C.G.; cartography, M.L. and F.N.V.; writing—original draft preparation, A.B. and S.D.R.; writing—review and editing A.B., E.C.G., F.N.V., M.L. and S.D.R.; supervision, A.B. and S.D.R. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. Rural tourism has commonly been identified as one of the main areas of application of the principles of sustainable tourism, but the literature has typically focused solely on the ecological dimension, particularly when referring to agritourism. This study presents a new approach to assessing the “eco-e ectiveness” of the evolutionary dynamics of agritourism, as applied in a study of NUTS-2 regions in two European countries (Spain and Italy) that have implemented similar rural development strategies. To this end, a synthetic sustainability index was developed using the Index Decomposition Analysis (IDA) technique. The last period of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) 2007–2013 was chosen for the study in order to analyze the outcomes of a programming cycle focusing on the diversification of agriculture through tourism. The results show that the sustainability of agritourism growth is not homogeneous and has specific features in di erent regions of the same country. In some cases, there were more similarities with regions from other countries. This tool could help evaluate the impact of agritourism and facilitate comparisons between di erent regions, in this way supporting the process of transition from a linear to a circular economy. 2020-11-12T09:13:26Z 2020-11-12T09:13:26Z 2020-08-30 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Belliggiano, A., Garcia, E. C., Labianca, M., Valverde, F. N., & De Rubertis, S. (2020). The “Eco-Effectiveness” of Agritourism Dynamics in Italy and Spain: A Tool for Evaluating Regional Sustainability. Sustainability, 12(17), 7080. [doi:10.3390/su12177080] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/64215 10.3390/su12177080 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España Mdpi