Rethinking Legal Criteria for Assessing Compensation for Rural Land Expropriation: Towards a European Institutional Framework

In public management, it is common to face conflicting objectives, particularly in relation to land use. Adequate land use management requires a valuation of land that incorporates the value of all its characteristics. That is, in addition to the traditional direct use value, it must incorporate the non-use value (existence and legacy), as well as the indirect use and option values. The analytic hierarchy process is used, firstly, to identify the priority values based on a panel of experts, and secondly, in assessment of use/non-use values, using market valuation techniques as support. As a result, we analyse the trade-offs among all values, and the respondent’s consistency. At first, we observed that the soil with the highest protection had the lowest market value in terms of direct use. However, considering the weights of the panel of experts, we can conclude that the market value only represents 7.6% of the total value. Non-market values represent 92.4% of the total value. The underlying aim is to facilitate decision-making in the field of land management to increase social welfare and the resilience of landscapes.