Análisis de la demanda de los andaluces hacia su agricultura y la utilidad social que les proporciona mediante un proceso analítico jerárquico (AHP)

Abstract

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was designed in the European Union (EU) for the set of its Member States, trying to improve the citizen welfare. Nevertheless, and despite the reforms undertaken on it in an attempt to adapt this Policy to the reality, the CAP has been widely criticized for its low efficiency, particularly because it has not been able to integrate the social preferences related to agriculture. This paper tries to contribute to implement adequate analytical tools for the identification and quantification of citizens preferences toward agriculture and of citizens´ satisfaction reported by this activity, and to clarify whether the policymakers of the European Union have integrated into the new Common Agricultural Policy the demands derived from the society they are working for. To get these aims, the research are focussed on the region of Andalusia, where based on a survey of 409 polled and the application of the multicriteria method, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), a hierarchization of the demands are obtained. Lately, a social utility index is calculated which represents the utility reported by agricultural activity, as a producer of goods and service, to the region of Andalusia.