Wine routes and efficiency of wineries in Sardinia

The interest of travellers in wine tourism has been steadily increasing since the 1990s. Consequently, many regions around the world have adopted a variety of policies intended to promote wine-gastronomic tourism. In Sardinia (Italy), this form of tourism has shown a significant upward trend, and today it provides a valuable opportunity to rural and often vulnerable inland communities to boost and diversify their economic structure. To encourage this type of tourism, in 2009, the regional government focused on some historic territories of the island and implemented the “wine routes programme” (WRP). These territories were selected according to their importance for growing local grape varieties and showcasing vineyards and winery establishments. The mandate of the routes was to create value around the local viticulture traditions through increased quality of wines and greater emphasis (to improve visitor’s experience) on the discovery of local produce, heritage landmarks and various expressions of the country’s popular culture. Since winemakers play a pivotal role, the impact of the WRP on the performance of wineries is of paramount importance to achieve the final goal. To assess the impact of the WRP on the performance of local producers, we carry out a controlled before-and-after study, taking the wineries within the wine route areas as the treated units and the rest of the population as the untreated or control group. The performance of wineries is captured by the scores of a data envelopment analysis (DEA) over the time span 2004–2012. Findings reveal that the WRP increased the technical efficiency of wineries measured by DEA scores. Another result is that the impact of WRP is higher in the last two years of analysis (2011 and 2012), meaning that the programme needs some years to be effective and cause the positive effect. Our results are confirmed by a series of robustness checks.