Farmers regularly take decisions that affect both their profitability and the environment. For instance, they choose which crop to grow, whether to invest in a new barn, how much pesticide to spray, and whether to join a cooperative.
Behavioural insights can help us better understand how and why farmers make these decisions. For instance:
mutual trust is fundamental for farmers to join producer organisations.
farmers are more likely to establish filter strips when they perceive clear environmental benefits for watershed protection.
farmers tend to adopt organic practices more if they sense social pressure in that direction.
Understanding these behavioural factors can contribute to more effective and efficient agricultural policies.
Agri-environmental policies generally build around two complementary approaches: mandatory requirements and (compensated) voluntary measures. One of the challenges of the future EU Common Agricultural Policy is precisely to find the right balance between these two types of interventions. We conducted an experiment with farmers in three EU Member States to assess the impact of (1) increasing mandatory contributions to the environment, and of (2) decreasing unconditional income support. We also assess the effect of two key behavioural factors: environmental concern and trait reactance. Results show that both interventions reduce voluntary contributions to the environment, but the reduction is higher when mandatory contributions increase than when income decreases.. However, when mandatory contribution increases substantially, this more than offsets the reduction of voluntary contributions, leading to higher total contributions.
This behavioural experiment with farmers assessed the effect of two policy features of the new green architecture of the EU common agricultural policy on the adoption of environmentally friendly practices: (1) increasing mandatory adoption and (2) shifting budget to voluntary schemes. Results shed light on behavioural patterns, highlighting potential trade-offs between mandatory and voluntary schemes to increase agriculture’s environmental and climate performance.
This paper reviews the findings from the last 20 years on the behavioural factors that influence farmers’ decisions to adopt environmentally sustainable practices. It also proposes policy options to increase adoption, based on these behavioural factors and embedded in the EU Common Agricultural Policy. Behavioural factors are grouped into three clusters, from more distal to more proximal: (i) dispositional factors; (ii) social factors and (iii) cognitive factors. Overall, the review demonstrates that considering behavioural factors enriches economic analyses of farmer decision-making, and can lead to more realistic and effective agri-environmental policies.
For the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to be a success, it is necessary to understand farmers' decision-making and viewpoints beyond the assumptions made by neoclassical economics, because farmers' motivations are not only driven by profit maximisation. In this context, a qualitative study (focus groups) was conducted to better understand farmers' experience with the three CAP instruments designed to motivate them to adopt more environmentally-friendly practices: cross compliance, green direct payments (i.e., 'greening') and voluntary agri-environmental and climate measures. This report was published as an annex to the Impact Assessment accompanying the Proposals for a Regulation establishing rules on support for strategic plans to be drawn up by Member States under the Common agricultural policy (EUR-Lex - 52018SC0301).
This report provides an overview of the potential contribution of economic experiments to the Common Agricultural Policy evaluation toolbox. The methodology of economic experiments is briefly described in chapter 2. Chapter 3 presents examples of experimental studies relevant for the analysis of the Common Agricultural Policy. Chapter 4 discusses whether there is room for economic experiments in the EU evaluation toolbox. Chapter 5 identifies the main challenges when implementing economic experiments. Chapter 6 provides a set of recommendations, arising from the discussions between the authors of this report and policy officers from DG AGRI, relative to the introduction of economic experiments in the CAP evaluation toolbox.
Agri-environmental policies generally build around two complementary approaches: mandatory requirements and (compensated) voluntary measures. One of the challenges of the future EU Common Agricultural Policy...
The Commission is launching this survey to collect data on food loss and waste prevention initiatives along the food supply chain.
This survey aims to collect relevant information on...
This paper reviews the findings from the last 20 years on the behavioural factors that influence farmers’ decisions to adopt environmentally sustainable practices. It also proposes policy options...
