Importance of Contract Attributes on Conservation Reserve Program Enrollment Decisions in the Prairie Pothole Region

Neeraj Dhingra, Cheryl Wachenheim (), David Roberts and William C. Lesch

No 205712, 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Interest in the Conservation Reserve Program in the U.S. has waned. Enrollment for 2015 was targeted at 26 million acres but as of the end of February, actual enrollment had declined to 24.6 million acres (USDA, 2015). Available studies point to recent fluctuations in commodity prices as a predominant factor in this enrollment gap. Other potentially influencing factors remain understudied, including farmer preferences for contract design. A choice experiment was conducted in the Prairie Pothole region to assess these preferences. An exploded logit model was used to evaluate the preference heterogeneity among program attributes. Results indicate that an increase in maximum allowed rental payment, length of contract, and the government’s share of establishment cost increase utility of farmers, whereas, fixing terms at the beginning of the contract, and imposing more land use restrictions on enrolled land have a negative impact.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Land Economics/Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm and nep-env
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea15:205712

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.205712

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