Understanding Farmers' Reluctance to Reduce Pesticides use: a Choice Experiment

Comprendre la réticence des agriculteurs à réduire l'utilisation des pesticides: une expérience de choix

Benoît Chèze, Maia David and Vincent Martinet

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Despite reducing the use of pesticides being a major challenge in developed countries, dedicated agri-environmental policies have not yet proven successful in doing so. We analyze conventional farmers' willingness to reduce their use of synthetic pesticides. To do so, we conduct a discrete choice experiment that includes the risk of large production losses due to pests. Our results indicate that this risk strongly limits farmers' willingness to change their practices, regardless of the consequences on average profit. Furthermore, the administrative burden has a significant effect on farmers' decisions. Reducing the negative health and environmental impacts of pesticides is a significant motivator only when respondents believe that pesticides affect the environment. Farmers who earn revenue from outside their farms and/or believe that yields can be maintained while reducing the use of pesticides are significantly more willing to adopt low-pesticide practices. Policy recommendations are derived from our results.

Keywords: Pesticides; Agricultural practices; Production risk; Discrete choice experiment; Risque agricole (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dcm, nep-env and nep-exp
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://ifp.hal.science/hal-03192158v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ifp.hal.science/hal-03192158v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Understanding farmers' reluctance to reduce pesticide use: A choice experiment (2020)
Working Paper: Understanding farmers' reluctance to reduce pesticide use: A choice experiment (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03192158

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().