Author
Banerjee, Simanti
This study examines public values for ecosystem services (ES) associated with soil health in agricultural lands. We use a choice experiment of Nebraska residents to investigate the effect of descriptive norm nudging on willingness-to-pay (WTP) for ES. Empirical results show an overall positive WTP for ES-generating policies but significant differences across treatment groups. Results show a higher WTP for a social norm nudge that refers to a relatively large geographic area (state versus county). Results also show that total WTP for state households would pay for conservation practice incentives on less than 10% of cropland.
Understanding the role of risk in farmland leasing contract choices is important to assess the welfare consequences of farm policies or environmental changes that affect production risk. We use a unique dataset of landowners and tenants in Kansas to examine the role of risk in their farmland leasing contract choices. We find that greater production risk and more risk-averse landowners encourage fixed cash rent contracts. As many variables can potentially affect contract choices, we use a penalized regression to show that the inclusion of relationship variables leads to little change in the main results.