Demand and supply of agricultural ES: towards benefit-based policy

Abstract

In order to integrate ecosystem services (ES) in designing agri-environmental policy, we investigated both the demand for, and supply of, ES from agricultural environments in Finland. Using the discrete choice experiment method, we measured citizens’ willingness to pay (WTP) for four different ES and analysed farmers’ compensation request (willingness to accept [WTA]) for producing these services. Biodiversity and water quality gathered the highest WTA of farmers, but also the highest WTP of citizens. Overall, the average WTA exceeded the WTP for almost all attributes and levels, but 20–27 per cent of farmers were willing to produce the ES with the compensation lower than citizens’ WTP.

Farmers' awareness of eco‐efficiency and cleaner production as environmental responsibility: Lithuanian case

“…The goal set for the group was to investigate public goods as part of potential for future agricultural and rural development policy. The Institute for European Environmental Policy (Cooper et al, 2009), European Parliament (Hart et al, 2011), OECD (2015) and well‐known scientists in the field (e.g., Bateman & Balmford, 2018; Tienhaara et al, 2020), issued the lists of public goods provided by the agricultural sector, which is quite similar. It should be stated here, that environmental public goods are quite often listed in all researched literature in contrast to social public goods, that is, food security, rural vitality, farm animal welfare and health (Bateman & Balmford, 2018; Cooper et al, 2009; Hart et al, 2011; Tienhaara et al, 2020).…”

Heterogeneous preferences of citizens towards agricultural ecosystem services: the demand relevance in a choice experiment

“…2. A similar survey was conducted among farmers in the same project, and the number of plants species in cultivation was significant in the farmer survey (Tienhaara et al 2020). Even though the attribute was not significant in the pilot study for citizens, it was necessary to retain it in the choice experiment, in order to keep the two surveys identical.…”

How Does Improve Farmers’ Attitudes toward Ecosystem Services to Support Sustainable Development of Agriculture? Based on Environmental Kuznets Curve Theory

“…On one hand, acceptance of PES schemes which offer financial compensation for the costs of certain management actions is likely to strengthen perceptions that ecosystem services are valuable [44][45][46]. On the other hand, the farmers who endorse ES values are likely to accept PES schemes as an effective way to manage farmland [36,47,48]. Payments for ecosystem services have attracted increasing interest as a mechanism to encourage an effective combination of environmental protection with agricultural production (e.g., the US Conservation Security Program (CSP) and the European agri-environment schemes (AES)) [1,49,50].…”

“…Considering the specific Chinese setting, compared with farmers in developed countries, Chinese farmers are excessively financially dependent on farmland [56]. For example, in the EU member states, AES has been implemented through contracts between public institutions and farmers, and requires farmers to change their farming practices in order to improve ecosystem services and in return for compensation per hectare of land [48,56,58,59]. AES offer financial compensation which help to reduce farmers' dependence on farming income, thereby reducing the risk of ecosystem services loss [56,60,61].…”