Speaker
Description
Farmers’ participation in voluntary agri-environmental (AE) contracts for landscape-scale conservation is determined by various factors like the contract design and farm characteristics. However, recent evidence from agricultural and behavioural sciences has highlighted the importance of considering behavioural factors in farmers’ decision-making. This study examines the role of farmer identity and perceived similarity between farmers’ identity and that of their neighbours in shaping preferences for participation in Farmer Clusters as part of AECS contract requirements.
The Farmer Cluster approach, originated in the UK, aims to achieve landscape-scale conservation objectives through farmer collaboration. The success of AE contracts and the Farmer Clusters depends on farmers’ participation, which is likely to be influenced by farmers’ conservationist identity and their perception of the conservationist identity of neighbouring farmers. In our study, we test whether farmers’ preferences for different Farmer Cluster arrangements included in AE contracts are influenced by 1) their relative salience of the conservationist farmer identity and 2) the perceived similarity between their own and neighbouring farmers’ farmer identities.
767 Scottish, English, French, and Dutch arable farmers received an online survey with a questionnaire and a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to investigate the contract preferences. In the DCE, respondents decided whether to participate in a hypothetical incentive program supporting establishing and maintaining biodiversity-friendly field margins.
Results from mixed logit models show that farmers’ preferences for farmer cluster regimes (optional and required participation) are not significantly influenced by their conservationist farmer identity and are not affected by the perceived similarity with neighbouring farmers. These findings are robust across different sample compositions, where we excluded protest respondents, respondents who rushed through the DCE, and respondents who rushed through the questionnaire. Furthermore, a latent class model suggests that farmer identity can predict farmers’ decisions for conservation contracts on a broader level.
More research is needed to make our results more generalizable. For example, the impact of the conservationist farmer identity on farmers’ decision-making about participating in Farmer Clusters can be investigated for other collaborative landscape-scale conservation approaches or with farmers from other European countries.
| Keywords | discrete choice experiments, farmer identity, similarity, farmer cluster, collaboration |
|---|---|
| Status of your work | First results |
| Early Career Researcher Award | Yes, the paper is eligible |
