*4.3. Landscape Communication: Political, Cultural, Social and Entrepreneurial Accountability*

As above mentioned, such a complex project involves landscape as the general cognitive/project dimension of the common act. The landscape is the ontological reference basing on which the identity of the settled communities arises: the more featured the local identity, the stronger the global connection and the opening to different people and cultures: as such, landscape involves and coordinates the political, cultural, social and entrepreneurial accountability.

In the proposed project, the subjects sharing this responsibility are a private Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), the Sicilian Regional Authorities, the Enna Regional Province, the Municipality of Pietraperzia, the regional Universities, the local banks.

The management of the actions foreseen by the project could be carried out by a project company with the following tasks:


Given the central role played by the SPV, a risk profile can be outlined assuming that a private corporate takes:


In order to control the aforementioned risk factors, the SPV can implement a multiplayer strategy coordinating the action of the complementary subjects, basing on their areas of competence and responsibility:



Accordingly, two project hypotheses have been proposed.

The first one concerns the cost allocation between the private and public players (Figure 15):

**Figure 15.** Cost allocation (EUR'000).

The second one concerns the revenues dynamics as a result of the progressive extension of the archaeological research and the excavation campaigns.

Four further scenarios have been outlined trying to take into account the advantages of a wider cultural/contemplative experience thus the greater attraction of the archaeological-landscape basin.

All of the scenarios assume revenue growing according to variable rates and more or less intensely over the project lifetime, in particular a multiplier of the basic revenue, assumes year by year values less, equal or greater than 1, and constant or variable in different time spans of the 30-years project lifetime.

The five scenarios (including the basic one, whose multiplier is the constant value 1) are displayed in Figure 16, comparing the non-discounted layouts to the discounted ones.

For each of these layouts, the economic results and the financial indices have been calculated. The graphs of Figure 17 compare the scenarios 2–5 displaying the streams of revenues, costs, and annual and cumulated cash flows, only for the constant discounted cash flow, that is the less cost-effective. The tables underneath report the indices for each revenue layout (hypotheses 2–5) and for all the types of cash flow, as well as shown in Table 4.

**Figure 16.** Revenue dynamics scenarios: (**a**) non-discounted layouts, (**b**) discounted layouts.



**Figure 17.** Economic-financial patterns of the discounted continuous cash flow of hypotheses 2–5. Tables: first column EUR'000; graphs: abscissa: years; ordinate: EUR'000.

Some comments on these results concerns:

• as first, the strategic role played by the stream of revenues and, indirectly, by the public recognition of the archaeological basin that should be created connecting the more strategic territorial values in an internally coherent landscape unit characterized by a strong identity,


These final multifaceted results, corresponding to different hypotheses of revenue dynamics, discounting, and costs distribution (with and without amortization) are the basis for the following critical interpretation of the economic-financial indices listed and compared above, in the prospect of supporting a future-oriented entrepreneurial behavioural pattern.

### **5. Discussions. The Economic-Financial Variables as Cultural and Social Communication Media**

As anticipated, a detailed discussion on the results of this experiment integrating territorial, socio-economic and landscape communication, can be carried out by considering the multiple interpretations of each scenario from the perspective of the different type of indices. Between the four types of cash flows, only the discounted cash flows have been considered in this comparison, in order to take into account the impact of the interests included in the amortisations.

The comparison of the four scenarios has been carried out by normalizing the results and indices—expressed in different measurement units (EUR, percentage, years) (Figure 18a)—according to a standard scale of dimensionless scores (Figure 18b). A sort of "average scenario" has been outlined by calculating the average values of all the indices (18a) and scores (18b) in order to provide a benchmark for each of the four scenarios.

Two further final indexes have been calculated:


The discussion of these results proposes a comparison between the orthodox economic-financial approach and a possible heterodox perspective, the latter coming from the Keynesian and post-Keynesian financial speculative approach. Particularly, especially in the field of public economy, speculation needs to be assumed in its original meaning (excluding any ethical bias) mostly aimed at the monetary dynamics of a capital asset—basing on its risk/return profile—as well as the financial situation of the of players involved, that in this case define the social, cultural and political-administrative reference territorial framework.

a)





**Figure 18.** Orthodox and heterodox interpretations of the economic, financial and monetary performances of the four scenarios. (**a**) Economic financial results. (**b**) Orthodox interpretation: normalization of the economic and financial indices. (**c**) Graphic comparison of the four scenarios according to the orthodox interpretation. (**d**) Heterodox interpretation: normalization of the economic and financial indices. (**e**) Graphic comparison of the four scenarios according to the heterodox interpretation.

Furthermore, although this DCFA experiment focuses on the goods and services that can be placed on the market, the economic-financial-monetary representation tool needs to be placed within a process that is triggered and guided by the political-administrative system as a consequence of a preliminary agreement between all the players involved, converging toward the logic of the "Cultural Asset Impact Investments".

This approach is concretely applied here assuming the seven indices according to their specific economic, financial and monetary significance:


"propensity to expect" whose higher level typically characterizes low-risk or free-risk investments, such as the one developing in specific situations of complementarity and convergence of private and public interest, according to the concept of "social benefit".

Figure 18 displays the comparison of the orthodox and heterodox approaches. The first one, synthesized in the radar graph of Figure 18c, shows the almost concentric placement and size of the four scenarios hypotheses within the indices polygon area and with respect to the aforementioned "average scenario".

In such an interpretation, we notice that:


Such an approach can be better discussed by assuming the deferral of the revenues as a positive value, once the ability of the public to guarantee the continuity of the project is recognized by the private player. As a consequence the monetary performances such as Elasticity (*Er*), Average Period (*AP*) and Discounted Payback Period (*DPP*) can be appreciated according to Figure 18d so that the ranking of the hypotheses changes according to the radar graph of Figure 18e.

As a result, two new asymmetries are highlighted: on the one hand the minor between hypotheses 2 and 4. On the other hand, the former poorest hypothesis 3 overcomes the average layout as well as hypothesis 2, and a more evident asymmetry in respect of all the other layout is highlighted. At the same time hypothesis, 4 is slightly preferable to the others.

Some final remarks highlight the main limitation of this research. A first limitation concerns the uncertainty of the costs of the project implementation, that could vary based on the more detailed description of the intervention area. A second uncertainty factor concerns the impact of the information and communication system (WebGIS and territorial marketing) on the shared knowledge of the activities promoting the archaeological-cultural basin.

Finally, the dialectic between the orthodox and heterodox interpretations could be more widely founded by detecting the integration of the private and public commitments in similar investments over the regional territory. Such a further study would provide basic information about of the amount of the marketable goods and services, in reference to the composition and the agreements between the private and public players about the budgeting and the cost allocation.

### **6. Conclusions**

The conceptual premises of this project-valuation experiment, focus on the potential virtuous circle connecting research, experiencing and promoting in the perspective of increasing the scientific knowledge and public awareness of the cultural-territorial value. This work takes up the challenge of integrating the contemplative and cultural experience in the promotion of activities involving a composite set of public and private players.

This prospect outlines the conditions for hypothesizing that, despite the evidence of an orthodox economic approach, typically inspired by a microeconomic vision, the context feeds-back on the perception of profitability by the entrepreneurs involved in a more general "landscape impact investment" experience. In fact, a traditional approach inspired by the logic of environmental responsible investments (according to the Social Responsible Investments—SRI—approach [100,101]) focuses on the compatibility between private revenues and social benefits. In this case, instead, we envisaged actions, players and scales able to trigger a positive territorial impact (the end) basing on the individual economic cost-effectiveness (the means).

In fact, in such a project-decision context, mainly aimed at triggering local impact over a vast land area, this feed-back involves the decisions (concerning the expectations) as well as the underlying evidence (concerning the observations) that can be interpreted differently by the entrepreneurs according to the shared awareness to be part to an overarching socio-economic subject.

The convergence of natural evidence (the cultural landscape values) and cultural intentionality (the perspectives and prospects of players and users) encourage the individual entrepreneurial profiles to join giving rise to a territorial-economic unitary context where the sum of the individual choices creates a sort of collective intelligence typical of the social advanced communities.

In such a research area, a final remarkable issue concerning the achievements of evaluation science is the mutual causality—that is the expression of the two-way exchange of information –between valuation and project, surprisingly by means of economic-financial analysis when the project involves the cognitive/emotional individual/collective sphere of the land cultural asset.

In fact, whereas usually, the financial analysis holds creativity to the limitation of economic efficiency and financial feasibility, in this case, the collective project prospect, powered by the coordination of the landscape multiple dimensions, influence in turn the entrepreneurial creativity and the interpretation of the economic, financial and monetary indices.

According to the results of the economic analysis, further studies could be carried out in the field of operational research, thus transforming the aforementioned normalization of the indices in a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) process involving the scores of the four scenario hypotheses, and the relative importance of each of them compared to the others, measured by a weight system. Furthermore, MCDM could be assumed as the communicative platform enveloping the whole cognitive, evaluative and creative process over which stake-holders and stock-holders meet combining and integrating cultural, professional and managerial resources: in this widened study context, the monetary abstraction would cover just a part of the whole decision-making path, actually involving the concrete values as the contents of specifically outlined value functions, and their relative importance according to an overarching weight system.

Typically, a weight system implements some theoretical assumptions coming from the constructivist philosophical approach, according to which the social reality—by definition, a linguistic elaboration—can be represented, and as a consequence constructed, as a result of an epistemic agreement between "standard observer" [102] (scientists). In an extended edition of this approach, influenced by pragmatism, the agreement involves social players converging toward shared objectives, thus prescinding from the truth. In fact, it should be noticed that the aforesaid agreement involves the programmes and the selective codes of conflicting and/or and cooperating social sub-systems. In general, such an extension values the predictive success, or at most, utility, that in the general context of land-urban policy, characterizes the programming approach based on standardized and shared communication patterns.

Accordingly, the landscape communication—here assumed as the final stage of the social abstraction of "things" in the "identity feeling" bringing together a settled community—can provide further social evidence for an economic-evaluation approach integrating the orthodox perspective (ordinary interpretation of the DCFA indices) and the heterodox prospect (valuing the extraordinary opportunity of a growing social agreement), thus highlighting the importance of the "monetary shape" [103] of the private-public investment. The monetary interpretation of the territorial development programmes takes into account and values the intertemporal communication [104], thus connecting further and further generations by means of the recognition of the settled communities' ancient greatness, which is the primary and original shape of the social capital asset.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, S.G., E.G., F.G. and C.M.; methodology, S.G. and F.G.; software, S.G., F.G. and C.M.; validation, S.G., M.R.T., C.M.; formal analysis, S.G. and M.R.T; investigation, E.G. and F.G.; resources, E.G., C.M. and F.G.; data curation, S.G. F.G.; writing—original draft preparation, S.G. G.N.; writing—review and editing, S.G., G.N. and M.R.T.; visualization, S.G., F.G. and G.N.; supervision, S.G., G.N., M.R.T.; project administration, S.G., E.G., F.G., C.M., G.N. and M.R.T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
