Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 44-83 |
| Number of pages | 40 |
| Journal | Journal of Agricultural Economics |
| Volume | 75 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 9 Feb 2024 |
Abstract
Ensuring that farmers' ex ante preferences are accounted for is crucial for the design of effective agri-environmental contracts. We present a systematic review of 127 discrete choice experiment (DCE) studies of farmers' preferences with respect to agri-environmental contracts. DCE studies evaluate two central features of farmers' behaviour: (1) their willingness to accept land use prescriptions, such as fertiliser use, application of pesticides, restrictions on cropping, livestock management, integration of silvopasture, maintaining soil health or water use restrictions; and (2) their responses to variations in incentive and commitment criteria, such as reward schemes, monitoring regimes, technical assistance, flexibility of agreements, administrative burden and collaborative implementation. Our analysis considers how these different elements are interlinked and applied in experiments to simulate farmers' decision-making processes. We examine recent methodological improvements in explaining farmer behaviour, including the accommodation of preference heterogeneity, the combining of discrete (enrolment) and continuous decisions, and the incorporation of farmers' sense of identity. DCEs have been applied for the ex ante analysis of different policy instruments to inform the European Common Agricultural Policy and agri-environmental schemes outside the EU. The results of this systematic review may be useful in informing the future design of such agri-environmental programmes. The database underpinning this systematic literature review may help peer scientists to (a) compare, validate and triangulate their own findings with respect to other experimental approaches, (b) use previous willingness-to-accept (WTA) measures as priors for their own study design, and (c) identify research gaps regarding farmers' preferences for agri-environmental measures.
Keywords
- agri-environmental contracts, agri-environmental policy, choice modelling, discrete choice experiments, environmental governance, ex ante evaluation, stated preferences
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all)
- Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous)
- Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)
- Economics and Econometrics
Sustainable Development Goals
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In: Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 75, No. 1, 09.02.2024, p. 44-83.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Using farmers' ex ante preferences to design agri-environmental contracts
T2 - A systematic review
AU - Schulze, Christoph
AU - Zagórska, Katarzyna
AU - Häfner, Kati
AU - Markiewicz, Olimpia
AU - Czajkowski, Mikołaj
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 n° 818190). Katarzyna Zagórska gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Science Centre of Poland (Preludium 10, 2015/19/N/HS4/03365). Mikołaj Czajkowski gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Science Centre of Poland (Sonata Bis, 2018/30/E/HS4/00388). We thank two anonymous reviewers, and the Editor‐in‐Chief, whose extensive comments significantly improved the overall quality of the paper. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
PY - 2024/2/9
Y1 - 2024/2/9
N2 - Ensuring that farmers' ex ante preferences are accounted for is crucial for the design of effective agri-environmental contracts. We present a systematic review of 127 discrete choice experiment (DCE) studies of farmers' preferences with respect to agri-environmental contracts. DCE studies evaluate two central features of farmers' behaviour: (1) their willingness to accept land use prescriptions, such as fertiliser use, application of pesticides, restrictions on cropping, livestock management, integration of silvopasture, maintaining soil health or water use restrictions; and (2) their responses to variations in incentive and commitment criteria, such as reward schemes, monitoring regimes, technical assistance, flexibility of agreements, administrative burden and collaborative implementation. Our analysis considers how these different elements are interlinked and applied in experiments to simulate farmers' decision-making processes. We examine recent methodological improvements in explaining farmer behaviour, including the accommodation of preference heterogeneity, the combining of discrete (enrolment) and continuous decisions, and the incorporation of farmers' sense of identity. DCEs have been applied for the ex ante analysis of different policy instruments to inform the European Common Agricultural Policy and agri-environmental schemes outside the EU. The results of this systematic review may be useful in informing the future design of such agri-environmental programmes. The database underpinning this systematic literature review may help peer scientists to (a) compare, validate and triangulate their own findings with respect to other experimental approaches, (b) use previous willingness-to-accept (WTA) measures as priors for their own study design, and (c) identify research gaps regarding farmers' preferences for agri-environmental measures.
AB - Ensuring that farmers' ex ante preferences are accounted for is crucial for the design of effective agri-environmental contracts. We present a systematic review of 127 discrete choice experiment (DCE) studies of farmers' preferences with respect to agri-environmental contracts. DCE studies evaluate two central features of farmers' behaviour: (1) their willingness to accept land use prescriptions, such as fertiliser use, application of pesticides, restrictions on cropping, livestock management, integration of silvopasture, maintaining soil health or water use restrictions; and (2) their responses to variations in incentive and commitment criteria, such as reward schemes, monitoring regimes, technical assistance, flexibility of agreements, administrative burden and collaborative implementation. Our analysis considers how these different elements are interlinked and applied in experiments to simulate farmers' decision-making processes. We examine recent methodological improvements in explaining farmer behaviour, including the accommodation of preference heterogeneity, the combining of discrete (enrolment) and continuous decisions, and the incorporation of farmers' sense of identity. DCEs have been applied for the ex ante analysis of different policy instruments to inform the European Common Agricultural Policy and agri-environmental schemes outside the EU. The results of this systematic review may be useful in informing the future design of such agri-environmental programmes. The database underpinning this systematic literature review may help peer scientists to (a) compare, validate and triangulate their own findings with respect to other experimental approaches, (b) use previous willingness-to-accept (WTA) measures as priors for their own study design, and (c) identify research gaps regarding farmers' preferences for agri-environmental measures.
KW - agri-environmental contracts
KW - agri-environmental policy
KW - choice modelling
KW - discrete choice experiments
KW - environmental governance
KW - ex ante evaluation
KW - stated preferences
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85180206874&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1477-9552.12570
DO - 10.1111/1477-9552.12570
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85180206874
VL - 75
SP - 44
EP - 83
JO - Journal of Agricultural Economics
JF - Journal of Agricultural Economics
SN - 0021-857X
IS - 1
ER -