SmartCulTour aims to support regional development in European regions, with special attention to rural peripheries and the urban fringe, through sustainable cultural tourism. The project redefines cultural tourism through a contemporary lens and provides a comprehensive measurement framework for supply, demand and impacts. In order to support knowledge-led destination management, a decision-support system (DSS) will be developed for wide-scale monitoring purposes across European regions. The DSS will synthesize both traditional and non-traditional data sources, the latter particularly related to big data analytics, thereby assisting smart regional development. Besides a contribution to conceptual development and cultural tourism measurement, the main objective of SmartCulTour relates to the facilitation of community-led rural development through field experimentation in 6 living labs. Prior to these living labs, a comprehensive desk research will identify significant sustainable cultural tourism policies, their impacts and critical success factors. These best cases will inspire a series of possible local interventions. Within the living labs, novel creative approaches to stakeholder engagement are tested, notably arts-based methods, serious games, and service design which will help to provide local context and support. A toolkit will be designed to help destinations implement local actions towards sustainable cultural tourism development. SmartCulTour will therefore contribute to theory development, empirical validation of best practices within a living labs setting, and procedural development, particularly by providing European regions with a set of strategies to optimally engage with stakeholders and co-create sustainable cultural tourism experiences.

Behavioural and cognitive biases reduce the ability of decision makers to adopt the best solutions among the alternatives available. Borrowed from pre-existing knowledge in psychology on priming, “nudges” are defined as gentle interventions in a decision maker’s choice architecture (default choice, information, presentation, framing etc.), which enhance the likelihood of optimal choices. ForestAgriGreenNudges will first review initiatives and projects which explicitly or implicitly use Green Nudges to promote the use of sustainable practices in farming and forestry. It will then assess each type of nudge according to two types of criteria: 1) Criteria associated with efficacy in promoting the use of the desired practices over a sufficiently long period and 2) Criteria dictated by ethics and good practice principles (transparency, nudgee awareness, participation/self-regulation, actor-specificity, etc.) that guarantee the quality of the implementation process. Nudges will then be tested in the field and assessed on a grid, reflecting the desiderata of efficacy and implementation quality. The set of successful nudges will be enriched by innovative nudges based on information regarding attitudes and strategies of actors along the entire value chain. The resulting set of nudges together with their corresponding implementation guidelines, and the business models and market conditions which favor their application in agroforestry will be collected on an online tool (iNUDGE Academy) whose target audience will include policy makers, wholesalers, retailers, farmers and foresters. The tool will associate each nudge with implementation rules, possible domains of application and possible risks in terms of efficacy/good practice tradeoffs. Diffusion of the results among farming and forestry experts, policy makers, and actors along the value chain will maximise the impact of the project, enhancing the adoption of sustainable practices in the farm and in the forest.

The Societal Challenges addressed by European Union (EU) strategies such as the Green Deal and Farm-to-Form require innovative solutions in agriculture, forestry and rural areas. The Multi-Actor-Approach (MAA) is a promising instrument to speed up innovation. However, the H2020 RIA LIAISON (2018-2022) has identified some deficits and inconsistencies in the interpretation of the MAA by both current and potential MA consortia and Member States’ (MS) authorities. PREMIERE will therefore foster the development of sound, coherent and well-prepared MA projects in two ways. Firstly, it will contribute to the building of project consortia that make best use of the complementary knowledge of their members during proposal writing, project activities and beyond, in particular by improving the connection between Horizon Europe (HE) MA projects and Operational Groups (OG). Secondly, through insights and tools, it will support the implementation of innovative governance and sound decision making in policy and administration for the green transition. By using the results from LIAISON and capturing ‘grass roots’ ideas from project participants, policy makers and executive agencies through stakeholder dialogue across all 27 EU MS (including with the SCAR AKIS SWG, National Contact Points and other relevant HE projects), PREMIERE will develop tools as well as training and networking events for capacity development. These will include a Serious Game, an Online Academy and a MOOC. The project will test out the effect of providing seed funding to at least eight MA organisations (mainly OGs) and prepare a handbook of good practices. This user-focused workplan, with its open science outputs, will lead to more effective EU and national AKIS. It will be implemented by a very experienced, competent and genuinely MA consortium of policy makers, executive agencies, advisors for co-innovation partnerships, AKIS actors and/or and current and potential MA project partners.