Premium
Farmers' Preferences and Social Capital Regarding Agri‐environmental Schemes to Protect Birds
Author(s) -
Alló Maria,
Loureiro Maria L.,
Iglesias Eva
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.157
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1477-9552
pISSN - 0021-857X
DOI - 10.1111/1477-9552.12104
Subject(s) - common agricultural policy , agriculture , social capital , social trust , valuation (finance) , logit , contingent valuation , business , ranking (information retrieval) , willingness to pay , economics , public economics , geography , econometrics , microeconomics , finance , machine learning , sociology , archaeology , social science , computer science
The steady decline of birds living in cereal steppe lands is a worrying situation that the European Common Agricultural Policy is attempting to remedy through the application of agri‐environmental schemes ( AES ). We assess farmers' preferences towards these AES , which call for a number of environmental practices to protect birds. Using a face‐to‐face survey in farming communities in Aragón (Spain), and through the estimation of an Ordered Logit model ( OL ), we assess the ranking of AES attributes, and obtain their economic valuation according to the farmers' preferences. We find that social factors are also important in determining farmers' decisions. In particular, the importance of social trust and expectation of compliance by other neighbours, encourage farmers to sign up to AES . These and other results may be used to design more effective AES and help to solve this important biodiversity problem.