Incentivizing a regime change in Dutch agriculture

Mark J. Koetse; Jetske A. Bouma

doi:10.1016/j.eist.2022.08.001

Incentivizing a regime change in Dutch agriculture

Mark J. Koetse^*, Jetske A. Bouma

^*Corresponding author for this work

Environmental Economics

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Regime changes are hard to incentivize as behaviour is difficult to change. As efforts towards environmentally sustainable agricultural practices indicate, farmers are reluctant to adopt new practices. This study analyses whether policy packages of mixed public and private payments could be effective in incentivizing a regime change, and how targeting payments could further enhance this effect. We implemented a choice experiment among a large sample of Dutch crop (N = 296) and dairy (N = 514) farmers. Our results highlight the importance of offering policy packages of mixed incentives to stimulate farmers to adopt nature-inclusive farming practices. The combination of incentives is more effective than individual incentives alone, and targeting policies to sectors and farmers greatly enhances effectiveness: mainstream farmers require higher incentives to change their practices than farmers that already made changes on their land. This also highlights the importance of including non-financial elements in policy design for targeting especially mainstream farmers.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	265-282
Number of pages	18
Journal	Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
Volume	44
Early online date	31 Aug 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2022.08.001
Publication status	Published - Sept 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors are thankful to the National Farmer Society (LTO), National Green Investment Fund, the association of agri-environmental farmer cooperatives (BoerenNatuur), the Network Nature-Inclusive Agriculture Friesland, Rabobank, Triodos bank, Friesland Campina, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy for co-designing and providing critical feedback on the questionnaire and choice experiment. The authors thank the National Farmer Society (LTO) for their cooperation in distributing the questionnaire amongst their members, acknowledge Jeroen Brandsma for data management, Nico Polman from WUR-WECR for help on the design of the questionnaire and pretesting, and two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the paper. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Funding Information:
The authors are thankful to the National Farmer Society (LTO), National Green Investment Fund, the association of agri-environmental farmer cooperatives (BoerenNatuur), the Network Nature-Inclusive Agriculture Friesland, Rabobank, Triodos bank, Friesland Campina, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy for co-designing and providing critical feedback on the questionnaire and choice experiment. The authors thank the National Farmer Society (LTO) for their cooperation in distributing the questionnaire amongst their members, acknowledge Jeroen Brandsma for data management, Nico Polman from WUR-WECR for help on the design of the questionnaire and pretesting, and two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the paper. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors

Funding

The authors are thankful to the National Farmer Society (LTO), National Green Investment Fund, the association of agri-environmental farmer cooperatives (BoerenNatuur), the Network Nature-Inclusive Agriculture Friesland, Rabobank, Triodos bank, Friesland Campina, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy for co-designing and providing critical feedback on the questionnaire and choice experiment. The authors thank the National Farmer Society (LTO) for their cooperation in distributing the questionnaire amongst their members, acknowledge Jeroen Brandsma for data management, Nico Polman from WUR-WECR for help on the design of the questionnaire and pretesting, and two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the paper. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. The authors are thankful to the National Farmer Society (LTO), National Green Investment Fund, the association of agri-environmental farmer cooperatives (BoerenNatuur), the Network Nature-Inclusive Agriculture Friesland, Rabobank, Triodos bank, Friesland Campina, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy for co-designing and providing critical feedback on the questionnaire and choice experiment. The authors thank the National Farmer Society (LTO) for their cooperation in distributing the questionnaire amongst their members, acknowledge Jeroen Brandsma for data management, Nico Polman from WUR-WECR for help on the design of the questionnaire and pretesting, and two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the paper. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Funders	Funder number
LTO
National Farmer Society
National Green Investment Fund
Network Nature-Inclusive Agriculture Friesland
Ministerie van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit
Ministerie van Economische Zaken en Klimaat
Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving

Keywords

Choice experiment
Farmer behaviour
Financial incentives
Nature-inclusive agriculture
Policy packages
Scenario analysis

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.eist.2022.08.001

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Cite this

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title = "Incentivizing a regime change in Dutch agriculture",

abstract = "Regime changes are hard to incentivize as behaviour is difficult to change. As efforts towards environmentally sustainable agricultural practices indicate, farmers are reluctant to adopt new practices. This study analyses whether policy packages of mixed public and private payments could be effective in incentivizing a regime change, and how targeting payments could further enhance this effect. We implemented a choice experiment among a large sample of Dutch crop (N = 296) and dairy (N = 514) farmers. Our results highlight the importance of offering policy packages of mixed incentives to stimulate farmers to adopt nature-inclusive farming practices. The combination of incentives is more effective than individual incentives alone, and targeting policies to sectors and farmers greatly enhances effectiveness: mainstream farmers require higher incentives to change their practices than farmers that already made changes on their land. This also highlights the importance of including non-financial elements in policy design for targeting especially mainstream farmers.",

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doi = "10.1016/j.eist.2022.08.001",

language = "English",

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JO - Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions

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ER -

Incentivizing a regime change in Dutch agriculture

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

Access to Document

Persistent URL (handle)

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Cite this