Importance of Economic, Social, and Environmental Objectives of Agriculture for Stakeholders—A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

This article summarizes research results on the relative importance of agricultural policy objectives for different stakeholder groups. We focus on studies that have examined citizens’, farmers’, and experts’ preferences for economic, social, and environmental dimensions of multifunctional agriculture, paying particular attention to agri-environmental objectives. Descriptive and meta-analysis are used to examine 34 studies, employing compositional data analysis. The findings show that, overall, equal importance is attached to the economic, social, and environmental objectives. However, the general public emphasizes social values, whereas experts and farmers place more weight on economic objectives, which are also more prevalent in nationwide studies. With regard to the environment, objectives pertaining to sustainable resource management are weighted higher than landscape or biodiversity goals, although increasing emphasis has been placed on biodiversity in recent years.

KEYWORDS:

• agriculture
• multifunctionality
• objectives
• sustainability
• weighting

Notes

1. In the first stage, the keywords included different combinations of the following: Agricultural multifunctionality/multifunctional agriculture/sustainable agriculture; aspects/attributes/weights; attitudes/preferences/perceptions/demand; citizen/public/societal/social/consumer. In the second stage, the keywords were modified to include: environmental/agri-environmental/ecological; functions/benefits/objectives/concerns; policy/multi-criteria/AHP (analytic hierarchy process).

2. Sources included Eurostat, USDA Census, the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat), and the World Bank.

3. For other possible scale options, see, e.g., van den Boogaart and Tolosana-Delgado (2013).

4. The specifics of the ilr transformation are not presented here; rather, the interested reader is encouraged to see, e.g., Egozcue et al. (2003) and van den Boogaart and Tolosana-Delgado (2013).

5. Including the studies would have meant implicitly assuming a zero weight for the category that was missing in the study. As the studies could not provide any information on the weight of the missing category, it was deemed best to exclude them from the analyses.