To leave or not to leave? Understanding determinants of farmers’ choices to remain in or abandon agri-environmental schemes

The Role of Factors Affecting the Adoption of Environmentally Friendly Farming Practices: Can Geographical Context and Time Explain the Differences Emerging from Literature?

“…Localisation: In NE and SE, where rural development policies define target areas for many EFFPs, this factor plays a positive role as expected [77,89,90,[98][99][100][101][102]. Farm localisation within less-favoured areas has a predominantly positive effect in NE [89,103] and SE [24,100,[104][105][106][107][108][109][110]; however, some papers highlight negative results in SE [76,99,100,110,111], due to the fact that the scarcity of infrastructures and services-which characterises marginal areas-increases transaction costs and discourages the adoption of EFFPs [95].…”

“…The information and technical advice these organisations provide generally plays a positive role in the adoption of EFFPs regardless of geographical context. However, some opposite results are found for early organic farming adopters in NE [73,141] and in some SE countries [111,130] Farmer's familiarity with the EFFP: This factor is proxied by several variables, for example, the number of years the farmer has been aware of another adopter in the area [137,167], the number of years since he/she firstly adopted the EFFP [78,90], or, more generally, his/her experience of EFFPs [11][12][13][14]45,100,113,120,124,135,142,163]. The largest majority of the reviewed papers reports a positive effect for this factor.…”

“…Farm size NE: 1994 [103]; 1994-97 [171]; 1995-2010 [113]; 2003 [93]; 2004 [89]; 2006 [116] NE: 1996 [73]; 1999 [11]; 2004-08 [74]; 2008 [7,46] SE: 2000-15 [90]; 2004 [119]; 2010 [100,114] SE: 2000-03 [172]; 2003 [105]; 2008 [77]; 2008-09 [109]; 2010 [76] NA: 1996 [101]; 1997 [6]; 1999 [80]; 2003 [5,92]; 2007-09 [131] NA: 2004 [95] SA: 1996 [173]; 2002 [86]; 2007 [165] SA: 2008 [1] AF: 1996-2000 [66]; 2000 [12]; 2002 [67]; 2002-03 [71]; 2003 [68]; 2003-04 [72]; 2008-11 [69]; 2012 [70] AF: 2010 [83] AS: 2006 [78]; 2007 [20]; 2010 [79,133] AS: 2012 [140] OC: 2003 [137]; 2005 [168] NA: 1997 [170] SA: 2007…”

“…This effect is explained as a consequence of learning from other farmers, receiving information, sharing experiences, and imitation among neighbouring farmers [20,24,53,121]. This proximity effect is positive regardless of geographical context [70,89,90,165].…”

“…Sole proprietorship farm: A sole proprietorship structure facilitates farmers' decision-making towards the adoption of EFFPs in AS [79]. Instead, in NE, SE, and NA, more complex business types play a positive role compared with sole proprietorship [89,90] due to a higher managerial ability paired with a lower individual liability [91].…”