Like a stone thrown into a pond – poverty contrast of an emporium of solidarity

Purpose - This paper highlights to what extent an emporium of solidarity may affect poverty conditions of its recipients, and whether it generates net social benefits to different actors involved. Design/methodology/approach - To evaluate the effect of an emporium of solidarity project on poverty conditions of its recipients, we run Probit estimation models. As for the efficiency evaluation, we develop instead a social cost–benefit framework which considers benefits and costs to different actors somehow involved in the program. Results are based on survey data collected by the authors and administrative data. Findings - Using the emporium attendance length as a measure of the treatment intensity, results underscore that the emporium significantly reduces the monetary poverty only, while it is ineffective on the severe material deprivation. The robustness of our results is confirmed by the implementation of a propensity score matching estimator. Our study suggests that emporia can be efficient in term of resources usage and they can determine positive returns to actors involved, implementing a redistribution of goods toward poor households. Research limitations/implications - The paper and its conclusions are based on a case study, thus an Italian emporium called “Portobello” and located in the inner-city area of Modena (Emilia-Romagna region, Italy). Originality/value - The main novelty of our paper to the literature consists of the elaboration of a first comprehensive framework for the social impact assessment of an emporium of solidarity, regarding both its effects on socio-economic conditions of poor recipient households and its contribution to the local welfare as a whole.