Public willingness to pay for carbon farming and its co-benefits

Marit Kragt, Fiona L. Gibsona, Fleurk Maseyk and Kerrie A. Wilson

No 276116, Working Papers from University of Western Australia, School of Agricultural and Resource Economics

Abstract: Governments worldwide have implemented climate change mitigation policies that aim to encourage abatement by changing agricultural practices. In Australia, farmers can gain carbon credits for sequestering carbon or reducing emissions. In addition to mitigation, these 'carbon farming' activities often generate ancillary (co-)benefits, such as creating native habitat or preventing erosion. This paper presents results of an Australia-wide choice experiment, conducted to estimate community values for climate change mitigation and the co-benefits of carbon farming. Values for carbon farming benefits are shown to depend on respondent’s opinions about climate change. Respondents who do not believe that climate change is happening have a lower willingness to pay for reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions than people who believe climate change is (at least partly) caused by human actions. On average, respondents’ were willing to pay $1.13/Mt of CO2-e reduction. Respondents were willing to pay around $19/ha increase in the area of native vegetation on farmland. Value estimates for reducing soil erosion were not significant. Our results demonstrate that the community benefits from carbon farming extend beyond their effects on climate change mitigation. Future policies should take these positive values for co- benefits into account.

Keywords: Environmental; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19
Date: 2018-08-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dcm and nep-env
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https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/276116/files/WP1807.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Public willingness to pay for carbon farming and its co-benefits (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uwauwp:276116

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.276116

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