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.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3846/bm.2016.05