Reflection and general perception of sustainability certifications in the italian wine sector based on the preliminary data from the survey “Lavoro e Sostenibilità”

Nowadays, “sustainability” is on top of everyone’s mind, this concept represents an important feature that needs to be pursued. One of the sectors in which sustainability is highly discussed is the wine industry. Throughout the decades, programs, frameworks and guidelines (both private and public) have been released, all over the world aiming to guide the industry in the correct direction. Most of them foresee the release of a certification assuring attentive consumers, distributors and retailers, that the certified wine is produced sustainably. Given that environmental and economic dimensions have already been widely discussed, it is now interesting to investigate the social dimension of sustainability. In this context is placed the survey “Lavoro e Sostenibilità” promoted by Equalitas and Gambero Rosso. The aim is to investigate the entrepreneurial actions regarding the implementation of social sustainability in their business model and how much this influences firms’ performances. The final analysed sample represents 5.6% of the total enterprises present in the database, for a total of 185 questionnaires. Here is provided a qualitative analysis of the results along with an overview of the statistical analysis performed by Zanni and Cammeo. It emerges that Italian wine companies are aware and engaged in sustainability. However, entrepreneurs still consider more relevant the environmental and economic dimensions, investing more in these areas. With regard to social sustainability certifications, the weak interest towards those instruments is attributable to cost opportunity and the lack of knowledge. Still, the number of observations is not yet representative enough to generalize about the whole Italian wine sector, nevertheless these considerations could be used as starting point for future research and insights.