Farm Bill 2014: An Experimental Investigation of Conservation Compliance

Leading up to the 2014 Farm Bill, the House of Representatives and the Senate proposed alternative changes to the incentive structure for farmer conservation efforts. While both include crop insurance subsidies, the version proposed by the Senate made such subsidies conditional on conservation efforts. This study uses experimental methods to analyze the efficacy of these two alternative designs in comparison to the previous, 2008 Farm Bill, design and investigates in how far additional nudging for empathy can improve on the efficiency. The results support the contention that solely offering financial incentives, as is the case in the 2014 Farm Bill, leads to crowding-out of intrinsic motivations and hence may be counterproductive. Similarly, nudging for empathy by itself is relatively ineffective. Nudging in conjunction with financial incentives, however, has a statistically and economically significant and positive impact on conservation behavior and may therefore offer a relatively cheap way to improve the efficiency of conservation-related legislative efforts

Empathy Conservation: Experiments Suggest a Need for More Attention in Policymaking

One of the major challenges of environmental policy with regard to conservation is that it must often rely on voluntary and non-selfish actions of individuals. Traditionally policy makers rely on direct regulation and financial incentives, but both approaches face problems. Regulations may lead to resentment and the costs of perfect enforcement are prohibitively high. Financial incentives can be perverse and may lead to unintended consequences, including crowding out of intrinsic motivation. In addition, behavioral economics and economic psychology studies demonstrate that the assumptions of the neoclassical economic models (such as self-interest only, rationality, and willpower) on which the policy design often relies do not always hold in the field

2013 Farm Bill: An Experimental Test of the Senate and House Proposals

The 2008 Farm Bill currently guides agricultural and related environmental/conservation policy. Versions proposed by the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, to be implemented in the 2013 Farm Bill after differences are resolved, aim to achieve environmental (and other food related) goals, while also seeking significant spending cuts. While both versions propose to eliminate the Direct Payments program, they differ with respect to how other crop supports should work and whether crop insurance subsidies should be linked to conservation practices. The Senate Bill supports a policy design based on cross‐compliance, that is, crop insurance subsidies are conditional on conservation compliance, whereas the House Bill provides this subsidy without such compliance

Empathy Nudging as a New Component of Conservation Programs

In this article we continue discussing our vision for appealing to other than self-interest-only (profit maximization) in public policies on conservation of farming land. We look specifically at the downstream water pollution problem (i.e. agricultural practices of upstream farmers leading to soil erosion and chemical/fertilizer runoff, which results in poor water quality downstream). We are trying to find less costly solutions which will result in farmers using conservation technologies that decrease the impact of their agricultural practices on downstream rivers and lakes. One possible solution is to nudge for empathy, to encourage the farmers to consider the results of their choices from the perspective of the affected people, to encourage them to walk in the shoes of people who carry the negative effect of the pollution. As a result of doing so, these farmers might then join in the shared cause of improved water quality downstream, and change farming practices upstream, with lower costs overall

Empathy Conservation: What Did We Learn From the Experiments Testing the Metaeconomic Framework and Dual-interest Theory?

This article summarizes our experimental research testing the metaeconomics framework (MEF) and dual-interest theory (DIT), which suggests an im-portant and substantive role for empathy in the design of conservation policy to achieve sustaina-bility (for more detail, see http://agecon-cpanel.unl.edu/lynne/metaecon/Lynneetal2014TragedyCommons.pdf ) MEF and DIT posit that individuals are motivated by two inseparable, yet conflicting interests: self-interest and other (shared with others)-interest. This conflict gets resolved through empathy tem-pering self-interest, resulting in a balanced decision, in which neither of the interests is maximized, but we rather observe sacrifices in both inter-ests. Empathy is based on imagining the struggle of others, on “walking-in-the-shoes-of-others” and, as a result, perhaps joining in sympathy with a shared cause like conservation and sustainability

Empathy Nudging Increases Conservation of Farming Land

One of the major challenges of environmental policy with regard to conservation is that it must often rely on voluntary and non-selfish actions of individuals. Traditionally policy makers rely on direct regulation and financial incentives, but both approaches face problems. Regulations may lead to resentment and the costs of perfect enforcement are prohibitively high. Financial incentives can be perverse and may lead to unintended consequences, including crowding out of intrinsic motivation. In addition, behavioral economics and economic psychology studies demonstrate that the assumptions of the neoclassical economic models (such as self-interest only, rationality, and willpower) on which the policy design often relies do not always hold in the field

Downstream Pollution 2: Does Framing Affect Genders Differently?

About a year ago we published the article “Downstream Pollution: Do Gender and Emotion Matter” (Cornhusker Economics, September 23, 2015) reporting the gender effects with respect to expressing positive and negative emotions in the downstream pollution game. We found that expressing positive emotions does not result in higher levels of conservation and, thus, does not significantly affect the quality of downstream water regardless of the gender of the polluter. At the same time, expressing negative emotions was more effective in increasing conservation and achieving cleaner water downstream. Notably, in contrast to our expectations, men responded to negative emotions with a larger increase in conservation levels than women did. In this article, we further explore the gender differences in the environmental context; specifically, we test whether framing affects women and men differently