Farmers’ willingness to adopt sustainable agricultural practices: A meta-analysis

Sawssan Boufous, Darren Hudson and Carlos Carpio

PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 2023, vol. 2, issue 1, 1-22

Abstract: This research is a meta-analysis that focuses on farmers’ willingness to accept adopting sustainable practices. We use a set of meta-regressions and statistical tests to analyze 59 studies providing 286 WTA estimates. Our aim is to examine gaps in the literature of sustainable agriculture adoption and highlight the major findings of peer-reviewed works. We found evidence for significant methodological factors affecting WTA values, and the presence of unique Willingness to Accept mean value that would be the true proxy for how much farmers’ must be compensated to adopt sustainable agriculture practices.Author summary: The increasing growth of consumption needs puts pressure on the natural system, harming climate, biodiversity, water, and environment which has induced a recognition that action should be taken to mitigate irreversible damage to the environment. Sustainability is believed to be obtainable through a change in consumer’s and producer’s behavior, which can be primarily done through the transformation of our agricultural system using alternative farming approaches that are based on ecological principles [1]. The literature is very expansive on analyzing farmers’ willingness to adopt sustainability but it is limited in providing WTA values. Thus, in our meta-analysis we focus on quantitative WTA studies to investigate the presence of a proxy for a true mean WTA for sustainable agriculture and detect the methodological variables that might affect the WTA value. We found a proxy for the mean WTA for sustainable farming ranging between 567 USD/ha/year and 709 USD/ha/year, as well as a proxy for WTA producing biomass crops ranging from 2054 USD/ha/year to 2766 USD/ha/year. Also, among the significant methodological variables that affect WTA values are the use of a non-random sampling method, and contingent valuation. The two methods are found to lead to higher WTA values than when random and conjoint valuation methods are used.

Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pstr00:0000037

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pstr.0000037

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