VALUING RISK TRADEOFFS AND VOLUNTARY INSECTICIDE REDUCTION

Luanne Lohr, Timothy Park and Leon Higley

No 96-10, Faculty Series from University of Georgia, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics

Abstract: Farmer's willingness to voluntarily reduce insecticide use is not considered when regulatory approaches toenvironmental protection are proposed. Regulations that require behavior that would voluntarily be undertaken are excessive and economically inefficient. Using survey data from a contingent valuation scenario, we demonstrate the willingness of crop producers in four Midwestern states in the U.S. to trade yield losses for environmental risk reduction by eliminating an insecticide application. The mean acceptable yield loss for a sample of 1,138 producers in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Ohio is $8.25 per acre. Acceptable yield loss increases with the rated importance of environmental goods (fish, birds, mammals, native plants and endangered species), with formal education and with farming experience. Willingness to pay increase with total expenditure on herbicides and insecticides up to $89 per acre, then decreases as total expenditure continues to rise. We approximate that crop farmers in the four states are willing to give up over $420 million in yield losses, or about 4 percent of total sales of corn and soybeans, to guarantee protection of eleven environmental goods from moderate insecticide risk. Uncertainty about risks, dominance of regulatory approaches and economic pressures undercut voluntary reductions in insecticide use.

Keywords: decision models; agriculture; environmental protection; risk; contingent valuation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: VALUING RISK TRADEOFFS AND VOLUNTARY INSECTICIDE REDUCTION (1996)
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:wop:geaafs:9610

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Faculty Series from University of Georgia, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics University of Georgia, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 301 Conner Hall, Athens, GA 30602. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().