Do informational nudges effectively enhance the legal compliance of fertiliser companies? Lessons from randomised field experiments in Japan

Hiroki Sasaki and Daisuke Kunii

European Review of Agricultural Economics, 2025, vol. 52, issue 1, 155-186

Abstract: This study examines whether informational nudges effectively enhance adherence to the Fertiliser Act among Japanese fertiliser companies (N = 2,382) by conducting field experiments in collaboration with a national regulatory body. We find that the timely submission of reports to the authority increased by at least 5.7 percentage points, from a baseline of 70.3 per cent. This result suggests that highlighting the consequences of noncompliance—such as imprisonment and fines—through a loss aversion message effectively encourages compliance. These effects sustained for over a year in some regions, though being marginally significant. The loss aversion message has the greatest impact among both the smallest and largest companies.

Keywords: nudge; fertiliser; loss aversion; social comparison; commitment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/erae/jbaf005 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:erevae:v:52:y:2025:i:1:p:155-186.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

European Review of Agricultural Economics is currently edited by Timothy Richards, Salvatore Di Falco, Céline Nauges and Vincenzina Caputo

More articles in European Review of Agricultural Economics from Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().