Factors affecting farmers' willingness to participate in eutrophication mitigation — A case study of preferences for wetland creation in Sweden

Frida Franzén, Patrik Dinnétz and Monica Hammer

Ecological Economics, 2016, vol. 130, issue C, 8-15

Abstract: Local stakeholder participation in water management is emphasized in the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). Wetland creation to mitigate nutrient leakage from agriculture is one example where participation of local farmers is needed. In this case study of the Himmerfjärden coastal catchment, south of Stockholm, Sweden, we assessed the importance of socio-demographic factors, and of the existing agri-environmental scheme (AES), for their effects on farmers' willingness to create wetlands on their farms. The main factors from the AES were defined as five attributes in a discrete choice experiment approach, related to the current AES for wetland creation in the area. The results showed that approximately 30% of the farmers were interested in wetland creation. A common reason for not wanting to create wetlands was cost incurred by the farmer. Males were significantly more willing than females to create wetlands. Prior knowledge of the WFD increased willingness almost threefold, and land owners were significantly more willing than leaseholders. The choice experiment showed that higher cost ceiling for compensation, compensation percentage and annual subsidies can significantly increase the willingness to create wetlands. However, other options like result-oriented AES may be taken into consideration to attract the remaining 70% of all farmers.

Keywords: Stakeholder participation; Water management; Eutrophication; Wetland creation; Agri-environmental schemes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800916305961
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:130:y:2016:i:c:p:8-15

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.05.019

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 ().