The environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the Italian National Parks: Time and spillover effects across different geographical contexts

Protected Areas such as national parks are increasingly implemented to achieve the long-term conservation of nature and the provision of ecosystem services, hence preventing biodiversity loss. We study the environmental and socioeconomic impacts generated by eight Italian National Parks. We estimate the impacts i) on the short and medium term, ii) on the local population and on the neighboring areas (i.e., their spillovers), and iii) differentiating the analysis by the macro-geographical context in which National Parks are embedded (i.e., north, center, and south of Italy). The analysis is based on the combination of the Propensity Score Matching with the Doubly Robust Difference-in-Differences estimator. We find that the National Parks have a positive and increasing-over-time impact on the share of forested areas. Moreover, from the socioeconomic point of view, their impact has been positive on the number of local units, workers employed (especially in the tourism sector), and the number of incoming work commuters, but negative on the number of agricultural holdings. However, these results depend on the geographical contexts, i.e., most of the positive socioeconomic impacts are in the north. Finally, we find (positive) spillover in terms of forested areas, but non-significant socioeconomic ones.