Farmer preferences for agri-environmental policy design: experimental and behavioral evidence

Public Thesis Defense of Apoorva Vardhan 

"Farmer preferences for agri-environmental policy design: experimental and behavioral evidence" 

Summary 

Over the past decades, agriculture has made remarkable progress. Yet, these gains in agricultural productivity have also come with considerable environmental costs. In response, agri-environmental policies and other change agents have sought to encourage farmers to adopt more sustainable practices. Despite these efforts, however, progress towards improving the environmental performance of agriculture has increasingly appeared to stagnate.

There has been growing recognition that overcoming this stagnation may require moving beyond traditional agri-environmental policies, which are largely grounded in rational-choice theory and assumptions of profit maximisation, towards a more behavioural approach to agri-environmental policy design. Translating the shift towards a behavioural agri-environmental policy into practice, however, requires a much stronger empirical basis than currently exists on farmers' preferences for policy design, both during the formulation and implementation stages of the policy cycle. 

This thesis addresses this gap by examining farmers’ preferences for agri-environmental policy design across three sustainable farming systems (SFS) in Flanders, Belgium: biodiversity-friendly agriculture, pesticide-low and pesticide-free systems, and non-inversion tillage. Combining a survey, a discrete choice experiment (DCE), and a randomised controlled trial (RCT), the thesis pursues four objectives. 

First, it examines the acceptability of different categories of policy instruments, classified under the RESET framework (Rules, Education, Support, Engagement, and Tools).

Second, it investigates whether the institutional origin of a scheme (public versus private) influences farmers’ willingness to participate and their preferences for specific scheme attributes, including payment, contract duration, and environmental ambition, using stated preferences elicited in a hypothetical choice setting. 

Third, it evaluates whether communicating sustainable farming practices through single- versus double-sided gain-framed messages influences enrolment in eco-schemes, using revealed preferences in the form of actual adoption. 

Fourth, it identifies the farm structural and farmer-level factors associated with the acceptability of policy instruments, stated preferences for scheme attributes, and actual adoption.

The findings demonstrate substantial heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences for agri-environmental policy design. Both farm structural characteristics and individual farmer factors help explain these differences. By advancing the empirical understanding of how farmers evaluate and respond to different policy designs, this thesis contributes to the development of more behaviourally informed agri-environmental policies.

Jury members 

Prof. Goedele Van den Broeck (UCLouvain) (Supervisor)
Dr. Erwin Wauters (ILVO) (Supervisor)
Prof. Marnik Vanclooster (UCLouvain) (Chairperson)
Prof. Frédéric Gaspart (UCLouvain) (Secretary)
Prof. Philippe Baret (UCLouvain) 
Prof. Liesbet Vranken (KU Leuven)
Dr. Jesus Barreiro-Hurle (JRC-EC)