Investigating farmers' preferences for the design of agri-environment schemes: a choice experiment approach

By Eric Ruto, G. Garrod. 2008

354 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In recent decades agri-environment schemes (AES) have become an increasingly important tool for policy makers aiming to reverse the post-war decline in environmental quality on agricultural land. The voluntary nature of such schemes means that the decision of farmers to participate is central to achieving policy objectives. Therefore, this paper uses a choice experiment approach to investigate the role that scheme design can have on encouraging farmers to participate. Choice data was gathered from a survey of farmers in 10 case study areas across the EU and analysed using both mixed logit and latent class models. In general, farmers were found to require greater financial incentives to join schemes with longer contracts or that offer less flexibility or higher levels of paperwork. It was also observed that a large segment of farmers (‘low resistance adopters’) would be willing to accept relatively small incentive payments for their participation in schemes offering relatively little flexibility and high levels of additional paperwork, when compared to a contrasting segment of ‘high resistance adopters’.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5814bf29e8869fdaae1e7139215caae190e2c3ae

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Citations in the corpus

Understanding farmers' reluctance to reduce pesticide use: A choice experiment (2020, background): “Interestingly, they introduce production risk as an attribute of their73 2Kuhfuss et al. (2014, 2016); Christensen et al. (2011); Broch and Vedel (2012); EspinosaGoded et al. (2010); Ruto and Garrod (2009); Hudson and Lusk (2004); Peterson et al. (2015).”
Evaluating farmers’ likely participation in a payment programme for water quality protection in the UK uplands (2013, background): “Also in accordance with the emerging literature, a considerable number of farmers in our study were willing to modify their land management practices if compensation payments were sufficient (Ruto and Garrod 2009; Christensen et al. 2011).”
Leverage Points for Governing Agricultural Soils: A Review of Empirical Studies of European Farmers’ Decision-Making (2018, background): “[98], Ruto and Garrod [99], Christensen et al.”
What drives farmers’ participation in EU agri-environmental schemes?: Results from a qualitative meta-analysis (2015, background): “…has also demonstrated that positive attitudes towards the environment, or to the adoption of environmentally-friendly farming practices, can play a significant part in farmers’ willingness to participate in an AES (Defrancesco et al., 2008; Ruto and Garrod, 2009; Barreiro-Hurle et al., 2010).”
Nudging farmers to enrol land into agri-environmental schemes: the role of a collective bonus (2016, background): “…on specific attributes of the contract such as the contract duration, the flexibility permitted by the menu of authorized management practices, and the perceived transaction costs associated with administration and control (Falconer and Saunders, 2002; Ducos et al., 2009; Ruto and Garrod, 2009).”