Speaker
Description
Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) that incentivize farmers to adopt environmentally friendly farming measures are a central element of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (Hasler et al., 2022; Pe'er et al., 2020). A collective approach allows farmers to coordinate measure implementation at the landscape level, which could increase their environmental effectiveness (Nguyen et al., 2022; Pe'er et al., 2020; Pe'er et al., 2022). However, in collective agri-environmental schemes (cAES), interdependencies between farmers can give rise to collective action problems (Segerson, 2022).
The collective action problem depends on the contractual design of cAES. The most established example of cAES in the Netherlands entails a ‘quasi-collective’ contract model (Bredemeier et al., 2022) (Barghusen et al., 2021; Terwan et al., 2016). A similar cAES model has also recently been implemented in the German federal state of Brandenburg (MLUK Brandenburg, 2024). In these models, a farmers’ collective concludes a collective contract with the financing institution (Bredemeier et al., 2022). In the second step, the collective concludes individual contracts with the members (Bredemeier et al., 2022; Terwan et al., 2016). Thus, farmers still receive individual payments for the implementation of environmentally friendly farming measures (Terwan et al., 2016).
However, the sanctioning regime for a non-implementation of measures can create interdependence in a farmers’ collective (Segerson, 2022). Sanctioning regimes can foresee a threshold from which onwards payment reductions rise disproportionally to infringements (MLUK Brandenburg, 2023). Such disproportionate sanctions lead to a collective liability within the farmers’ collective. This interdependence leads to a need for coordination in the group (Camerer, 2011). However, farmers might fear failure to coordinate within the collective, which could influence their willingness to participate in cAES.
The planned study aims to investigate to what extent different contract features in cAES can lower farmers’ risk perceptions related to the needed coordination in a collective. In the second step, we aim to analyze how contract features associated with a lower risk perception can influence farmers’ willingness to participate in cAES. To investigate these research questions, we plan to conduct a factorial survey experiment with German farmers in the Summer of 2025. Participating in the annual REECAP meeting would allow me to present hypotheses, experimental design, and pre-registered analysis.
| Status of your work | Experimental Design |
|---|---|
| Early Career Researcher Award | Yes, the paper is eligible |
