A Joint Framework for Analysis of Agri‐Environmental Payment Programs (original) (raw)
Related papers
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2022
The effectiveness of payment schemes for delivering agri-environmental public goods with provision thresholds (biodiversity, water quality) depends on reaching enough farmland enrolment at the landscape scale. Supporting the development of collaborative approaches with a financial bonus conditioned to a collective element on top of an individual basic payment is a promising way to favour participation and continuity of environmental commitments in an area. However, little is known on farmers' attitudes towards such mixed-payment mechanisms. Using a choice experiment, we measure farmers' preferences towards an individual bonus for sponsoring peers, which can be combined with a collective bonus for improving the ecological quality of rivers in northwestern France. Applying a mixed logit model, we find that respondents have a positive willingness to accept contracts with a sponsor bonus, but a negative willingness to accept a sponsor bonus combined with a bonus for reaching a collective environmental objective. We characterize respondents' heterogeneity with a latent class model and identify 3 different attitudes towards the bonus options: (i) negative preferences for both, particularly for the combined bonus, (ii) indifference, (iii) positive preferences for both, even higher for the combined bonus.
Flexible Incentives for Environmental Management In Agriculture: a Typology
Flexible incentives are incentives that do not dictate how environmental objectives are to be achieved, and they are important tools in managing agro-environmental problems. They are, however, a means to an end and not and end in themselves. Successful implementation of these incentives depends on clear, enforceable performance standards. Furthermore, the best flexible incentive approach appears to be one that involves a combination of instruments that fit local, social, economic and environmental conditions. It is important to recognize, as well, that the flexible incentive approach can impose substantial transaction costs and can require a high level of both producer and agency human management skills. Thus the policy challenge is to find effective ways to lower the costs of using flexible incentives and of expanding the management capacity of those farmers and ranchers who can deliver high environmental values over the long run.
Incentive Payments to Encourage Farmer Adoption of Water Quality Protection Practices
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1996
Farmers can be encouraged to voluntarily adopt environmentally sound management practices through the use of incentive payments. This paper uses both a bivariate probit with sample selection model and a double hurdle model on data from a survey of farmers to predict farmer adoption of the practices as a function of the payment offer. The five management practices addressed here are integrated pest management, legume crediting, manure testing, split applications of nitrogen, and soil moisture testing. Also estimated are models that predict the acreage on which these practices would be applied given the decision to accept the incentive payments estimated.
Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2016
Heterogeneity of farmers' preferences towards agri-environmental schemes across different agricultural subsystems ABSTRACT. Specialised literature on the uptake of agri-environmental schemes (AES) has paid little attention to how this can be influenced by the different types of agricultural systems. This paper analyses the heterogeneity of farmers' preferences towards these schemes, distinguishing between different subsystems within the same agricultural system. We use the choice experiment method to analyse the case study of three olive grove subsystems in southern Spain, with the subsystems ranging from extensive to intensive. The results reveal inter and intra subsystem heterogeneity of farmers' preferences towards AES both in general and specifically related to scheme attributes. A variety of factors appear to lie behind inter subsystem heterogeneity, especially those associated with subsystem specificities (principally, the type of joint production). Likewise, numerous factors play a role in intra subsystem heterogeneity, most of them related to farm/farmer socioeconomic and physical characteristics. These findings will help in the design of more efficient AES.
What Do Farmers Want From Agri-Environmental Scheme Design? A Choice Experiment Approach
Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2010
Agri-environmental schemes (AES) have had a limited effect on European agriculture due to farmers' reluctance to participate. Information on how farmers react when AES characteristics are modified can be an important input to the design of such policies. This article investigates farmers' preferences for different design options in a specific AES aimed at encouraging nitrogen fixing crops in marginal dry-land areas in Spain. We use a choice experiment survey conducted in two regions (Arago´n and Andalusia). The analysis employs an error component random parameter logit model allowing for preference heterogeneity and correlation amongst the non-status quo alternatives. Farmers show a strong preference for maintaining their current management strategies; however, significant savings in cost or increased participation can be obtained by modifying some AES attributes.
A scoping review on incentives for adoption of sustainable agricultural practices and their outcomes
Nature Sustainability
The increasing pressure on agricultural production systems to achieve global food security and prevent environmental degradation necessitates a transition towards more sustainable practices. The purpose of this scoping review is to understand how the incentives offered to farmers motivate the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices and, ultimately, how and whether they result in measurable outcomes. To this end, this scoping review examines the evidence of nearly 18,000 papers on whether incentive-based programmes lead to the adoption of sustainable practices and their effect on environmental, economic and productivity outcomes. We find that independent of the incentive type, programmes linked to short-term economic benefit have a higher adoption rate than those aimed solely at providing an ecological service. In the long run, one of the strongest motivations for farmers to adopt sustainable practices is perceived benefits for either their farms, the environment or both. Beyo...
2015
The identification and treatment of protest responses in stated preference surveys has long been subject to debate in the literature. The most common treatment is to omit protest responses identified through debriefing questions from the analysis. All major studies investigated the role of protest responses in willingness to pay (WTP) contexts. This paper analyses protest responses in stated preference surveys using a willingness to accept (WTA) format, drawing on choice experiment data on preferences of providers of ecosystem services towards incentive-based environmental schemes. The paper addresses two main objectives. First, we identify a range of possible reasons for protest responses to emerge in a WTA context through a review of literature on WTA for participation in land-based incentive schemes and a discussion on how protest responses in WTA contexts differ from those in WTP formats. Second, the paper analyses the impact of omitting protest responses in a WTA context on wel...
Q Open
Indicator-based frameworks for assessing farms’ environmental performance have become a resource for environmental knowledge regarding the impacts of agricultural practices. The present study explores whether a novel indicator-based direct payment system, which focuses on the farms’ environmental impact, could better target Swiss agricultural policy and help achieve its environmental goals. The system covers the environmental topics of biodiversity, nutrients and climate, plant protection products, and soil. Despite high direct payments, simulations with an agent-based agricultural sector model show that such indicator-based payments have a limited impact. For example, the decrease in the animal population is only moderate. Though direct payments alone can hardly lead to the desired reduction in Switzerland's environmental pollution, they could help make important contributions to a more targeted distribution of environmentally oriented direct payments and steer agricultural pro...
Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, 2018
Attribute non-attendance (ANA) has received very little attention in the context of willingness to accept (WTA), although an increasing number of studies analyze the preferences of ecosystem service providers towards incentive-based schemes. We add to the understanding of ANA behavior by analyzing stated and inferred ANA in a choice experiment investigating farmers' WTA for participating in agri-environmental schemes (AES) in southern Spain. We use mixed logit models, following Hess and Hensher (2010) for the inferred ANA approach. Evidence is found of ANA behavior for both stated and inferred approaches, with models accounting for ANA clearly outperforming those that do not account for it; however, we produce no conclusive results as to which ANA approach is best. WTA estimates are only moderately affected, which to some extent is consistent with the low level of non-attendance found for the monetary attribute. Stated and inferred approaches show very similar WTA estimates. Additionally, we investigate sources of observed heterogeneity related to ANA behavior by using a sequence of bivariate probit models for each attribute. Overall, our results hint at a positive relationship between ease of scheme adoption and non-attendance to attributes. However, further research is still needed in this field.
Regional Environmental Change, 2013
Maintaining drinking water quality is essential to water companies and their customers, and agricultural non-point source pollution is a major cause of water quality degradation. In this paper, we examine the potential use of payments financed by a water company as incentives for farmers to adjust their agricultural land management practices in order to protect water quality. We use a choice experiment (CE) to measure farmers' minimum willingness to accept (WTA) requirements to adjust agricultural land management practices in Nidderdale and the Washburn valley (Yorkshire, UK) under a potential local payment for ecosystem services (PES) programme. Latent class analysis of farmers' CE responses was used to quantify the size and spread of farmers' preferences and minimum WTA values for compensation payments, and to investigate potential drivers of preference variation. Analysis suggested that the emphasis on sheep or cattle/dairy production within mixed farming businesses in this area provides a partial explanation for the considerable observed heterogeneity in preferences and minimum WTA requirements for participation in a potential PES programme.