In this paper, we refer to "forestry domain" in a broad sense, including activities, forest sector components, actors and policies connected with the use and management of forest resources. For example, "nature tourism" is included within the forestry domain if it is based on recreational or educational activities organized in a forest site or in relation to forest resources (e.g., Wilkes-Alleman, J., Ludvig, A., 2019). 2 More information about the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project SIMRA (Social Innovation in Marginalized Rural Areas) that is at the basis of this definition is available at: www.simra-h2020.eu. Such project involves scientists, NGOs and practitioners aimed at understanding how social innovation emerges, what its impacts are and how it can be supported through policy. 10 The GIZ Monitoring and Evaluation Unit does not distinguish between outputs, outcomes, impacts, but simply refers to 'results'.According to this model, any output, outcome, or impact is a goal, and anything that may be achieved, more or less directly or indirectly, is a result. 11 The identification of existing evaluation frameworks, approaches, methods and tools for analysis was carried out by expert teams each working on one of four main domains, namely the economic, social, environmental, and institutional aspects. They each followed common selection criteria and procedures defined by specific guidelines . Overall, 111 frameworks, approaches and methods were fully analysed through the use of 107 variables. They have been identified in the four domains and pre-analysed for the purposes of SIMRA project respectively by: ICRE8 (Greece) (economic aspects), University of Foggia (Italy) (social aspects), EFI (Finland) (environmental aspects) and DLO (The Netherlands) (governance/institutional aspects). The trans-disciplinary frameworks/approaches/methods and tools have been identified and pre-analysed by the University of Padova (Italy). More details are available on: Secco et al. 2017 (Deliverable 4.2; www.simra-h2020.eu). 12 These experts and stakeholders are the official members of the SIMRA Social Innovation Think Tank (SITT), created in 2016 by the SIMRA Consortium. Since its creation, SIMRA has carried out three consultations, two online (July 2016 and July 2017), and one face-to face workshop (held in Bratislava, Slovakia, October 26 to 28 2016). The SITT stakeholder consultation is one of the key elements of SIMRA project, carried out under main responsibility and coordination of IFE SAS (Slovakia), which arranged both the workshop in Bratislava and the two online consultations. In the various rounds, the SITT members were consulted on several different issues related to social innovation in marginalised rural areas, not only on methodology aspects. More information are available at: www.simra-h2020.eu.

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Social innovation (SI) impacts are long-term changes that affect different dimensions of territorial capital (i.e., economy, society, environment, governance) for the territory in which SI occurs. Yet, systematic empirical evidence and theoretically sound assessments of the impacts of SI are scarce. This paper aims to fill the gap and assess the different aspects of SI’s impacts in European and Mediterranean areas that are characterized by marginalization processes. To assess the impacts of SI in marginalized areas, we use the evaluation framework developed within the Social Innovation in Marginalized Rural Areas (SIMRA) Horizon 2020 project and apply it to nine SI initiatives related to the fields of agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and rural development. Our findings show that SI produces cross-sectoral (societal, economic, environmental, and governmental) and multi-level impacts (on individuals, community, and society), which have improved the societal well-being, and contributed to the reduction of certain forms of marginality, mainly inside the territory in which SI occurred.

Environmentally Friendly Farming Practices (EFFPs) are tools aimed at providing ecosystem services or mitigating the environmental impacts of intensive agriculture. A large literature has explored the factors affecting the adoption of EFFPs by farmers. However, opposite effects of several factors on uptake have often emerged. We carried out a qualitative meta-analysis of the literature seeking to identify some geographical and temporal trends that can provide a rationale to explain these opposite results. To reach this goal, we analysed the literature and classified the following factors affecting farmers’ behaviour according to the theory of reasoned action and planned behaviour: farm, farmer, informational, and social factors. Our perspective in exploring the existing literature shows that the geographical context and the temporal period under analysis, considered as different adopters’ cohorts, can explain most of the opposite effects. For example, while the different effects of farm structural factors show specific geographical patterns, those of the management and economic factors follow temporal trends. The impact of some farmers’ socio-demographical characteristics and some social factors can be explained in terms of both geographical context and time. The broad trends we found cast light on the importance of further research adopting the same methodological approach in different geographical contexts and under a temporal perspective.

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In a context of political and economic austerity, social innovation has been presented as a solution to many social challenges, old and new. It aims to support the introduction of new ideas in response to the current urgent needs and challenges of vulnerable groups and seems to offer promising solutions to the challenges faced by rural areas. Yet the evidence base of the impacts on the sustainable development of rural communities remains scarce. In this paper, we explore social innovation in the context of community forestry and provide a brief synthetic review of key themes linking the two concepts. We examine a case of social innovation in the context of community forestry and analyse its type, extent, and scale of impact in a marginalized rural area of Scotland. Using an in-depth case study approach, we apply a mixed research methodology using quantitative indicators of impact as well as qualitative data. Our results show that social innovation reinforces the social dimension of community forestry. Impacts are highlighted across domains (environmental, social, economic, and institutional/governance) but are mainly limited to local territory. We discuss the significance of those results in the context of community forestry as well as for local development. We formulate policy recommendations to foster and sustain social innovation in rural areas.

Researchers and policymakers emphasize that people's involvement in forest management can secure their support of conservation initiatives. However, the evidence on the effectiveness of top-down participation is weak. This study uses cross-sectional household data from 16 villages in the buffer zone of Pench Tiger Reserve (Madhya Pradesh) in India to contribute to the evidence base of such assumption. Using a propensity score matching to control for observable bias, we evaluate the effects of two state-driven incentive-based participatory projects, i.e. the Joint Forest Management and Ecodevelopment, on selected social outcomes. Specifically, we measured local people conservation knowledge, biodiversity attitudes as well as trust in and satisfaction with the tiger reserve management authorities. We found that the effects of participatory management on conservation knowledge were positive, but negligible. We found no significant effects on local people's biodiversity attitudes, trust and satisfaction with the tiger reserve management authorities. Top-down and externally induced participation may explain our results. Our findings clearly indicate that the effectiveness of participatory conservation interventions is conditional on the level and nature of local participation. Top-down participatory projects may not be sufficient to generate local support of conservation and in some cases, they may even exacerbate local conflicts.

Social innovation is considered a relevant concept to tackle societal challenges and needs in rural areas and to promote smart, inclusive and sustainable growth. The characterising sector of rural areas is agriculture; therefore, the focus of this paper is on social innovation in the field of social farming. Among the many factors leading to the emergence and development of social innovation, agency has been considered relevant in the literature on transformability and transformative social innovation as it is the ability to turn contextual difficulties into opportunities for social innovation and for inclusive growth. This paper proposes an evaluation framework to assess the different dimensions of agency by triangulating quantitative with qualitative data and by using indicators. This paper adopts a case study approach, analysing two cases of social farming in Italy and the Netherlands. The results show that the social innovation idea and the resilience of the agency are among the most relevant dimensions for the emergence and development of social innovations. Finally, this paper discusses the three most relevant factors for agency to lead to social innovation: idea and embeddedness of the agency, transformability of the context through agency´s resilience, and agency as catalyst for empowerment.