This ex-ante study explores the readiness of local stakeholders in a rural area to undertake the collective actions necessary to create a Geographical Indication on cheese to protect it from unfair competitiveness provided by brand usurpation. The paper provides an analytical model employable to assess the willingness of local stakeholders to cooperate on achieving a common goal in different post-communist rural areas. The proposed model combines operationalised, cognitive, and structural social capital indicators with Ostrom Conditions on collective action, referring to symmetric interests. Thus, it represents a methodology to realise a priori whether a local rural community is willing to undertake collective action to achieve a common objective. One hundred cheese producers were interviewed using scenario type questions. The results show that symmetric interests have the lowest effect on willingness to cooperate compared to structural social capital and demographics. The study indicates that better-educated respondents are more willing to cooperate than less well-educated. As in other post-communist countries, the educational and demographic factors can become an essential element, which may help overcome the negative perceptions of cooperation from the past.

This paper aims to map the ecosystem services (ES) provided by a reputed agropastoral ecosystem in the south of Albania and ascertain whether social capital affects the level of importance attributed to them. A perception analysis of both buyers and sellers of ES within the pastoral ecosystem is undertaken. The pastoral ecosystem is mainly evaluated for cultural services such as tradition, enhancing the area’s image, and environment ES. The strong inclination towards cultural ES and socioeconomic services indicates a lack of awareness of both buyers and sellers of ES in the local community regarding the environmental aspects of their ecosystem. However, participants showing a higher radius of trust with high linking social capital are more likely to confer very high importance to environmental services. Similarly, the cultural ES (traditional aspect) of the pastoral ecosystem is affected by cognitive and structural social capital. These are interesting findings for public policymaking concerning the opportunity to develop market transaction ES. Its development is more ground-based and effective if participation and civic engagement, especially the Linking dimension, is enhanced in the pastoral community.