Giacomo Pasino’s research while affiliated with University of Turin and other places

This contribution focuses on the construction of a model of the quality of life within the research project “Alagna Walser Green Paradise” (AWGP), developed with the Municipality of Alagna Valsesia and the Piedmont Region. Quality of life was measured through gross domestic product (GDP) for decades, but over time, other perspectives have been considered, such as health, education, employment, leisure, social relations, security, environment, landscape, and cultural heritage. Well-being measurement frameworks are applied at international and national levels but unlikely at rural levels. AWGP research activities define an experimental method to identify, together with local stakeholders, a set of indicators to measure rural quality of life. The suggested set considers the following context: Alagna Valsesia is a mountain rural tourist destination. The purpose is to collect useful information that allows local stakeholders to carry out activities of monitoring and improvement. Positive results at the end of this model test would allow reiteration of the same set of indicators in other rural areas.

Quality of life can be generally defined as people’s satisfaction with their lives and personal wellbeing. Contemporary literature agrees that dimensions such as health, education, employment, leisure, social relations, security, environment, landscape, and cultural heritage should be considered. Tourism serves as a stimulus for rural development, and assessing residents’ and tourists’ quality of life is relevant for local administrators of a tourist destination. Given the absence of quality-of-life models for individual municipalities, the research questions were aimed at the mapping of quality-of-life frameworks and the construction of a set of quality-of-life indicators for Alagna Valsesia. This research was conducted in 2023. The results of the research showed the possibility of constructing a modular model of indicator sets aimed particularly at decision making by territorial policymakers. The limitations of the research are related to the difficulty of finding different indicators in public platforms and, in the future, we would like to build a synthetic indicator replicable in other Piedmontese and Italian municipalities.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites are a useful tool to protect and promote the legacy human beings leave over the centuries. Ivrea, a 20th century industrial city, is the second Italian industrial site recorded in the UNESCO World Heritage List. It is a city in the North-West of Italy, historically known for the Olivetti factory, which made it world-famous by combining visionary ideals and a careful entrepreneurial policy. Our study focuses on the tourism value of the Ivrea UNESCO site and, in particular, aims at analyzing the level of integration of local stakeholders and their ability to identify guidelines for the promotion of the UNESCO site in terms of tourism. The research process was conducted with an in-depth analysis of the perception and consideration of public and private stakeholders concerning this topic. A questionnaire was prepared by a group of experts and individual interviews were conducted using the Delphi method; then, the results of the interviews were presented and the identification of priorities was carried out using the nominal group technique. Results show that the new UNESCO site in Ivrea has great potential, both in cultural terms, continuing the dissemination of Adriano Olivetti’s ideals, and in terms of tourism, because it may turn into a tourist attraction capable of generating new tourist flows and promoting the Olivetti approach.