Effects of observability and complexity on farmers’ adoption of environmental practices

Abstract

The ability of both regulators and farmers themselves to monitor the impact of environmental practices may be an issue with nonpoint source pollution. Effects that can be perceived via direct sensory evidence provide information at low cost. Results from a survey of livestock farmers suggest that a practice that has more obvious effects on water quality, manure application setbacks, is more likely to be adopted than a more complicated one with less visible effects, manure testing. Farmers’ perceptions of the profitability of the two practices were similar. The importance of observability and complexity has implications for educational programs.

Keywords:

• adoption
• behavioral economics
• complexity
• manure
• nutrient management
• observability

JEL:

• Q53
• D83

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, US Department of Agriculture, under Award number 2005-51130-02365, and the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station.

Note

Notes

1. Since this raises issues of multicollinearity, the variance inflation factor was checked for each regression and no evidence of multicollinearity was found.