The role of rice farmers’ attitude and trust in government in decision-making for participating in a climate-related agri-environmental scheme

Abstract

Excessive use of synthetic fertilizer has been proven to be an important cause of greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution in many Asian countries. This article aims to provide a better understanding of rice farmers’ preferences for a chemical fertilizer reduction scheme (CFRS) by integrating economic and psychometric factors. A survey of 292 farmers was conducted in Taiwan. The results show that farmers using more chemical fertilizers have a negative attitude towards implementing SAP and less trust in government and would prefer a higher entry payment over an eco-label. On the other hand, farmers using less chemical fertilizer prefer to receive an eco-label rather than incentive payments. Our findings indicate that an eco-label and higher entry payment could overcome the psychological factors that hinder farmers’ engagement. This study provides policymakers with insights into farmers’ decision-making, which could lead to chemical fertilizer reduction, thereby mitigating climate change.

Keywords:

• agri-environment-climate measures
• farmer decision making
• hybrid choice model
• latent attitudes
• trust in government

JEL classification:

• C25
• C93
• D91
• Q18
• Q52

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1 In this study 90 variables.

2 In this regard, the simultaneous estimation using Apollo has been carried out. The corresponding set of socio-economic variables to construct latent attitudes cannot reach convergence, because each run takes more than one day.

3 Simultaneous Rob.t.rat for sustainable practice values: Class 1: −0.23 and Class 2: 0.42 smaller than those in the Sequential Rob.t.rat: Class 1: −2.37 and Class 2: 5.54.