TY - JOUR

T1 - The institutional design of agri-environmental contracts - How stakeholder attitudes can inform policy making

AU - Schulze, Christoph

AU - Matzdorf, Bettina

N1 - Funding Information: The authors acknowledge funding through the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), Grant/Award Number: 01LC1315A and funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 818190).

PY - 2023/2/7

Y1 - 2023/2/7

N2 - Agri-environmental climate measures (AECM) are considered a promising tool to achieve environmental policy goals. Not only farmers but also policy administrators and intermediaries are important actors whose attitudes and actions drive the success of these measures. To follow the idea of better stakeholder participation in the design of policy instruments, we analyse stakeholder viewpoints on the contract design of the AECM. We apply the Q methodology to 25 individuals from Brandenburg, Germany, who are from the farmer, policy administrator, and intermediary domains. We identify three distinct attitudinal profiles: the 'planners', the 'cooperators', and the 'individualists', which do not correspond to the three individual stakeholder groups. The results provide evidence that general differences in the viewpoints of policy designers and implementers on the one hand and farmers on the other hand are not a source of potential institutional mismatch. We further use the attitudinal profiles to develop three types of policy programmes with slightly different underlying rationalities. Policymakers could use such an approach to better develop target group-specific (sub)programmes in parallel. Our research strengthens the argument that multiple stakeholders should be involved in co-designing conservation measures. Moreover, behavioural factors should be considered in policy making processes.

AB - Agri-environmental climate measures (AECM) are considered a promising tool to achieve environmental policy goals. Not only farmers but also policy administrators and intermediaries are important actors whose attitudes and actions drive the success of these measures. To follow the idea of better stakeholder participation in the design of policy instruments, we analyse stakeholder viewpoints on the contract design of the AECM. We apply the Q methodology to 25 individuals from Brandenburg, Germany, who are from the farmer, policy administrator, and intermediary domains. We identify three distinct attitudinal profiles: the 'planners', the 'cooperators', and the 'individualists', which do not correspond to the three individual stakeholder groups. The results provide evidence that general differences in the viewpoints of policy designers and implementers on the one hand and farmers on the other hand are not a source of potential institutional mismatch. We further use the attitudinal profiles to develop three types of policy programmes with slightly different underlying rationalities. Policymakers could use such an approach to better develop target group-specific (sub)programmes in parallel. Our research strengthens the argument that multiple stakeholders should be involved in co-designing conservation measures. Moreover, behavioural factors should be considered in policy making processes.

KW - Agri-environmental schemes

KW - Environmental governance

KW - Institutional economics

KW - Policy design

KW - Social perspectives

KW - Stakeholder engagement

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85162178501&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1093/qopen/qoad001

DO - 10.1093/qopen/qoad001

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85162178501

VL - 3

JO - Q Open

JF - Q Open

IS - 1

M1 - qoad001

ER -