Jesus Barreiro-Hurle (Joint Research Centre | European Commission, Seville, Spain) will give this seminar, organized by the ELI-A department. 

Abstract

Despite more than 30 years being part of the policy toolbox of the CAP voluntary programs to foster sustainable practices have failed to gain mainstream acceptance by farmers. 

Interest on whether behavioral informed interventions could shift this trend has emerged in the last years and the Joint Research Centre has provided evidence on how this could be achieved. 

In this presentation I will showcase 4 experiments implemented by the JRC to raise awareness of the potential (or lack thereof) of these interventions to increase farmer participation. 

These experiments focus on how farmers would react to shifting the adoption of sustainable practices from voluntary to mandatory nature and whether nudges could increase adoption of eco-schemes. 

In addition, I will present our research on why interventions that have been proven effective in other domains seem to fail when applied to farmers focusing on their attitudes towards nudges and the issue of lack of salience of this interventions.