Combining participative and institutional approaches with multicriteria evaluation. An empirical study for water issues in Troina, Sicily

The policy problem addressed in this article is the perceived under-exploit ation of the potential availability of water resources in the town of Troin a (a municipality of eastern Sicily, Italy). In order to help the local tow n administration, which raised this issue, a trans-disciplinary research te am was formed with the purpose of testing some explanatory hypotheses and t o provide possible alternatives for action. The research design and process consisted of the following steps, (1) a multicriteria evaluation used as a learning tool to understand the main structure of the problem at hand and to explore its qualitative dimensions; (2) analysis of the structure of pow er interests and stakeholders (ranging from local to regional social actors ) by means of an institutional analysis; (3) field research involving in-de pth interviews with key actors, and a survey of local residents. This appro ach has proven very effective for finding out whether some real social comp romise solutions exist. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.