Small-Scale Farmers’ Preference Heterogeneity for Green Agriculture Policy Incentives Identified by Choice Experiment

Yaying Zhu and Juan Chen
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Yaying Zhu: School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan 430073, China
Juan Chen: School of Business Administration, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu 233030, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 10, 1-19

Abstract: This study addresses differentiation among small-scale farmers’ preferences for green agriculture policy incentive mixes. Transforming modern agriculture to ecological fertilization and pest extermination practices is paramount in developing green agriculture, but policy incentives aimed at stimulating small-scale farmers’ adoption of ecological fertilization and deinsectization techniques are often challenged by those farmers’ heterogeneous characteristics and their consequent mixed incentive preferences. We establish a model examining the interplay between small-scale farmers’ characteristics (e.g., age, education level, family size, participation in agricultural organization) and combinations of incentive policies (i.e., green subsidy, technical support, environmental propaganda, agricultural insurance) in farmers’ willingness to participate in ecological fertilization/deinsectization, using a sample of 1032 Chinese farmers. By applying a mixed logit model and latent class model regressions, we find that farmers’ age, education level, family size, and farming organization participation are the most important characteristics influencing farmers’ preferences. Specifically, senior farmers tend to accept an incentive policy combination of green subsidy and technical support; farmers with higher education levels prefer an incentive policy combination of technical support and environmental propaganda; and larger families prefer an incentive policy combination of technical support and agricultural insurance. Additionally, participation in any agricultural organization reduces the household’s preference for incentive policy combinations of technical support, agricultural insurance, and green subsidy. Based on these findings, a typology of small farmers’ green agriculture incentive preferences (including security, monetary, and autonomy orientations) is proposed, offering suggestions for future green agriculture policy optimization.

Keywords: green agriculture; ecological fertilization; ecological deinsectization; sustainable policy; farmer preference heterogeneity; choice experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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