The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations supports the production of edible insects as a promising and sustainable source of nutrients to meet the increasing demand for animal-derived products by the growing world population. Even if insects are part of the diet of more than two billion people worldwide, the practice of eating insects (entomophagy) raises challenging questions for Western countries where this is not a habit. The research applied the Rasch models and showed that, in the case of hunger or need, 70.8% of the sample declared that they would be willing to eat insects. The willingness to habitually consume and pay for insect food is very low, but the percentages are higher than people who had actually had insect tasting experiences. This demonstrates that a communication process is necessary that aims to overcome psychological/cultural barriers. Only in this way will it be possible to increase the propensity to consume insects.

The evaluation of sustainable development - and, in particular, rural development - through composite indices requires taking into account a plurality of indicators, which are related to economic, social and environmental aspects. The points of view evaluated by these indices are naturally interacting: thus, a bonus has to be recognized to units performing well on synergic criteria, whereas a penalization has to be assigned on redundant criteria. An additional difficulty of the modelization is the elicitation of the parameters for the composite indices, since they are typically affected by some imprecision. In most approaches, all these critical points are usually neglected, which in turn yields an unpleasant degree of approximation in the computation of indices. In this paper we propose a methodology that allows one to simultaneously handle these delicate issues. Specifically, to take into account synergy and redundancy between criteria, we suitably aggregate indicators by means of the Choquet integral. Further, to obtain recommendations that take into account the space of fluctuation related to imprecision in nonadditive weights (capacity of the Choquet integral), we adopt the Robust Ordinal Regression (ROR) and the Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA). Finally, to study sustainability not only at a comprehensive level (taking into account all criteria) but also at a local level (separately taking into account economic, social and environmental aspects), we apply the Multiple Criteria Hierarchy Process (MCHP). We illustrate the advantages of our approach in a concrete example, in which we measure the rural sustainability of 51 municipalities in the province of Catania, the largest city of the East Coast of Sicily (Italy).

The transition toward a circular economy (CE) in agriculture relies not only on technological progress but also on the behavioural readiness of millers to embrace sustainable practices. This study employs the Norm Activation Model (NAM) to examine how psychological and structural factors shape CE practices adoption among olive oil mill business owners in Sicily. Drawing on survey data, we conducted a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis using actual behaviour as dependent variable. The results indicate that Awareness of Consequences and Ascription of Responsibility significantly strengthen Personal Norms, emphasizing their key role in fostering moral engagement with environmental sustainability. Yet, Personal Norms alone do not directly lead to CE practices adoption, highlighting a persistent attitude–behaviour gap typical of traditional farming contexts. Notably, Awareness of Consequences exerts a direct effect on observed behaviour while Personal Norms do not, suggesting that NAM may require adaptation when applied to small, family-run agri-food firms in which the owner-manager translates the cognitive recognition of environmental impacts directly into firm-level decisions. Conversely, education, experience, enterprise size, and milling type are found to be significant drivers of CE participation, indicating that moral motivation must be complemented by suitable organizational and contextual support. The findings provide novel empirical evidence that the CE transition in agri-food systems results from the relation between individual moral activation and organizational capacity. Policy measures should therefore combine behavioural and structural approaches, through education, technical assistance, and targeted incentives, to encourage CE innovation and the possible valorization of olive oil by-products.