How do incentive-based environmental policies affect environment protection initiatives of farmers? An experimental economic analysis using the example of species richness

T. Dörschner and Oliver Musshoff

Ecological Economics, 2015, vol. 114, issue C, 90-103

Abstract: To address ongoing biodiversity losses, the use of incentive-based nature protection policies is increasingly recommended. In the present paper, we examine how action and result-oriented agricultural policy measures affect the species protection initiatives of real agricultural managers. To do so, we use a computer-based economic experiment involving a multi-period individual business simulation game. Our results indicate that action-oriented measures do not have any impacts on farmers' initiatives to protect species. In contrast to action-oriented policy measures, result-oriented measures with identical profit effect significantly increase these initiatives. Although risk-averse farmers are less willing to participate in result-oriented measures than non-risk-averse farmers, in general, risk aversion does not influence farmers' species protection initiatives. Furthermore, the species protection initiatives are influenced by the opportunity costs of species protection.

Keywords: Agriculture; Biodiversity conservation; Ecological service remuneration; Economic experiment; Policy impact assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800915000981
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:ecolec:v:114:y:2015:i:c:p:90-103

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.03.013

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().