The effects of changing regional Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System on Italian farmers’ strategies Stefano Pascucci a,⇑ , Tiziana de-Magistris b,1 a Wageningen University, Agricultural Economics and Rural Policy Group (AEP), Hollandseweg 1, Building No. 127, Room 2112, 6706 KN Wageningen, The Netherlands b Agro-Food Economics Unit Center for Agro-Food Research and Technology (CITA), Avda Montañana 930, 50059 Zaragoza, Spain article info Article history: Received 17 February 2010 Received in revised form 8 July 2011 Accepted 24 July 2011 Available online 29 September 2011 Keywords: Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System Farmer strategies Rural development Multivariate probit Italy abstract The aim of this paper is to identify and assess the role played by innovative extension services in affecting farmers’ strategy. More specifically we implement a multivariate probit model to evaluate the effects of different types of extension services introduced by a reform in the domain of Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) in Italy. The results show that both generalist and specialized services could play a major role in farmers’ value creation strategies. They also confirm that different strategies for cre- ating value are jointly implemented. Finally, they show that a further improvement in the quality of pub- lic provision of extension services within regional AKIS and a greater (systemic) interaction between farmers, rural actors and local networks should be supported. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Over the past decades the Agricultural Knowledge and Innova- tion System (AKIS) has been mainly organized by public agencies. More recently, several policy interventions have sought to reform AKIS, introducing elements of privatization and decentralization (Rivera, 2008). This has been particularly evident in the European context (Laurent et al., 2006; Labarthe, 2009), where interest in AKIS reform and its impact on farmers’ strategies has been rekin- dled by the debate surrounding EC Regulation 1698/2005 on rural development. Accordingly, each regional AKIS is supposed to stim- ulate European farmers to achieve more complex and broader objectives, such as more sustainable management of their busi- nesses (Council of the European Union, 2005). Moreover, all mem- ber states have to reform their regional AKIS to align them with Europe’s overall rural development strategy. In the literature on AKIS reform the emphasis has recently been laid mainly on the tendency to privatize and/or de-centralize public extension services in different agricultural systems (Qamar, 2005; Knickel et al., 2009; Swanson and Rajalahti, 2010). In contrast, the way farmers re-act to AKIS reform and how this reform impacts their overall strategies still remains puzzling and not completely addressed in this research domain. Indeed some studies analyzed the impact of AKIS reforms for example on farmers adoption of innova- tions (Wadsworth, 1994; Leeuwis and Van Den Ban, 2004), agri- environmental outcomes (Morriss et al., 2002), sustainable use of natural resources (Fujisaka, 1994), market performances (Dinar et al., 2007) and risk management (Pennings et al., 2005; Isengildina et al., 2006). Their main results indicate that the potential effect of AKIS reform on farmers decision-making lies in its organization, for example in the way extension services are provided to farmers (Kidd et al., 2000; Morriss et al., 2006). However, only a minority of them analyzed in more details the links between the use of differ- ent types of extension services and farmers’ strategies (Kidd et al., 2000; Klerkx and Leeuwis, 2008; Knickel et al., 2009). The objective of this paper is to cover this gap and therefore to better understand the effects of AKIS reform in promoting innova- tion and impacting on farmers’ strategies. Methodologically speak- ing we decided to evaluate these effects via a case study approach and implementing a discrete choice modeling such as the multi- variate probit model. In this way we directly analyzed the effects of an AKIS reform on the strategies made by a selected group of farmers (443) in a region of central Italy (Marche). Despites other papers our approach allowed to control for combination of differ- ent strategies and to analyze potential synergies or trade-offs be- tween them. The paper starts by reviewing the relevant literature on the role of the AKIS in setting farmers’ strategies (Section 2). In Section 3 we discuss our conceptual model on AKIS reform. In Section 4 we present the content of the Marche Regional Administration (MRA) reform and evaluate the effects on farmers’ decision making 0308-521X/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2011.07.005 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 (0) 317 485040; fax: +31 (0) 317 484736. E-mail addresses: stefano.pascucci@wur.nl (S. Pascucci), tmagistris@aragon.es (T. de-Magistris). 1 Tel./fax: +34 976716335. Agricultural Systems 104 (2011) 746–754 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Agricultural Systems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agsy