Nudging farmers to enrol land into agri-environmental schemes: the role of a collective bonus

Abstract

This paper shows that the introduction of a conditional collective bonus in an agri-environmental scheme (AES) can improve farmers' participation and increase land enrolment for lower overall budgetary costs. This monetary bonus is paid in addition to the usual AES payment if a given threshold is reached in terms of aggregate farmer participation. Using a choice experiment, we estimate the preferences of wine growers in the South of France for such a bonus. We show that it contributes to increased expectations of farmers on others' participation, therefore shifting a pro-environmental social norm and favouring the adoption of less pesticide-intensive farming practices.

Nudges, Social Norms, and Permanence in Agri-environmental Schemes

“…For example, Kuhfuss et al (2015) show with a choice experiment survey that a monetary bonus paid to all contractors if the adoption rate is above a given target can improve farmers' participation and increase land enrolment for lower overall budgetary costs. Indeed, this study shows that wine growers in the South of France does value this conditional bonus much more than its expected monetary value.…”

Estimating farmers’ stated willingness to accept pay for ecosystem services: case of Lake Naivasha watershed Payment for Ecosystem Services scheme-Kenya

“…Consequently, Willingness to pay has been applied mainly for situations where local communities pay for external services to sustain provision of ecosystem services. Conversely, some studies have applied monetary and conditional final bonus choice modelling to estimate WTA (Kuhfuss et al 2015). This study applied CV approach to elicit farmers estimated WTA as proxy price attached to ecosystem services in surrogate market given that most ecosystem services lack a market for direct trading.…”

Heterogeneity of farmers' preferences towards agri-environmental schemes across different agricultural subsystems

“…Collective contracts represent a promising way of reducing transaction costs (mainly public) while increasing the environmental effectiveness of policy instruments (Uthes and Matzdorf 2013). Although collective participation in AES has attracted growing attention in academia (see Franks 2011;and Stallman 2011, among others), estimates of the compensation needed to incentivise collective rather than individual participation are almost lacking (of the few relevant works in this respect, worthy of mention are those of Kuhfuss et al 2015;and Villanueva et al 2015). For this reason, we included the attribute Collective participation (COLLE) -with two levels, collective and individual participation -in the analysis.…”