Covid-19 has significantly affected people's food purchasing and consumption habits. Fears of disruptions in the food supply chain have caused an increase in the quantity and type of food bought by households. However, increases in food purchases could give rise to food waste with negative ramifications for the environment in terms of greenhouse emissions and groundwater pollution. To assess whether household food waste has changed during Covid-19 lockdown, we conducted a nationwide survey of household food purchasers in Italy. Although the amount of food purchases increased during the lockdown, our results show that food waste actually decreased as people mainly bought more non-perishable food. Interestingly, concerns about the impact that the pandemic could have on the waste management system and the desire not to add pressure to the waste management system are key drivers of decreased food waste in Italy during the pandemic. Our findings seem to suggest that Italian consumers are developing a new level of awareness about food waste with potential positive impacts on the environment in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and groundwater pollution.

Subjective probabilities as well as risk and uncertainty preferences influence many farmers’ decisions. Few contextualized field experiments were recently conducted to elicit farmers’ risk preferences. Contextualized field experiments use nonabstract framings that are familiar to subjects. Despite adding of context can undermine internal validity, such experiments are increasingly used in applied economics. Contextualized field experiments were never used to elicit farmers’ uncertainty preferences. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature. This required the development of a new approach in which uncertainty preferences were estimated while controlling for farmers’ subjective probabilities regarding future agricultural outcomes. The experiment involves Scottish farmers’ decisions to plant traditional or new potato varieties. Monetary incentives and incentive compatible elicitation techniques, such as quadratic scoring rules and certainty equivalent multiple price lists, were used. Results from the estimation of Fechner models using maximum likelihood estimation procedures show that failure to control for subjective probabilities generates an underestimation of estimated uncertainty preferences. Farmers are more averse to uncertainty than risk, and their choices are noisier under uncertainty than risk.

The Income Stabilisation Tool (IST), which was recently added to the European Common Agricultural Policy's risk management toolkit, is a mutual fund that aims at stabilising farmers' income. We investigate the drivers of farmers' participation in an IST for the apple sector in the Autonomous Province of Trento in Italy, which is the only region that has operationalised the IST in the European Union. Our analysis is based on a theoretical framework based on the Unified Theory of Use and Acceptance of Technology. Using a three‐year panel dataset of 3268 farm households, we estimated a logit model with the Mundlak–Chamberlain procedure. Our results show that higher crop production specialisation, associated with greater risk exposure, favours participation in the IST. Similarly, previous experience with mutual funds increases the acceptance of the IST. The analysis also provides evidence of how the new tool interacts with existing on‐farm protection strategies, leading to a discussion of the presence of adverse and advantageous selection effects. Our paper sheds light on farmers' acceptance of newly implemented sector‐specific ISTs and generates better knowledge and understanding of lock‐ins and levers that influence participation in such schemes, which are relevant to other EU regions or member states that are considering the introduction of ISTs.