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Challenges in Recruiting U.S. Farmers for Policy‐Relevant Economic Field Experiments
Author(s) -
Weigel Collin,
Paul Laura A.,
Ferraro Paul J.,
Messer Kent D.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
applied economic perspectives and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.4
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 2040-5804
pISSN - 2040-5790
DOI - 10.1002/aepp.13066
Subject(s) - incentive , process (computing) , institution , scale (ratio) , field (mathematics) , economics , agriculture , public economics , business , marketing , microeconomics , political science , computer science , ecology , physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , pure mathematics , law , biology , operating system
To develop evidence‐based agricultural policies, researchers increasingly use insights from economic field experiments. These insights are often limited by the challenges of recruiting large and representative samples of farmers. To improve the effectiveness and cost efficiency of farmer recruitment, researchers should apply the same experimental methods to the recruitment process that they apply to their main research questions. Here we experimentally evaluate ten recruiting strategies in two large‐scale, high stakes experiments. We find that monetary incentives and reminders are effective, but costly. Costless strategies, such as prominently citing a well‐known institution as the sponsor, had positive but small, effects on recruitment.