Farmer participation behaviour in the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) Agricultural Economics Society of Ireland 5 nd of November, 2009 Geraldine Murphy Stephen Hynes Eithne Murphy Cathal O’Donoghue

Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) Agri-environmental scheme since Year contract Fourth phase since August basic measures 2 additional biodiversity undertakings optional supplementary measures Closure of REPS 4 to new applicants July 2009

Research questions: farmer participation decisions Why do farmers participate in REPS? farmer participation is voluntary and universal farmers are primary environmental agents

Why do farmers participate in REPS? Economic Factors farm size farm system productivity of farm Demographic Factors farmers’ age presence of a successor Others farmers’ level of education/environmental awareness farmers’ previous experience with agri-environmental schemes

Research questions: farmer participation decisions Why do farmers participate in REPS? farmer participation is voluntary and universal farmers are primary environmental agents Why are certain biodiversity undertakings more appealing to farmers than others?

National Farm Survey (NFS) Farming and farm household activities Data collected since ,200 farms representing 115, NFS data set economic demographic farm characteristic Biodiversity undertakings

Why are certain biodiversity undertakings more appealing to farmers than others? Requirements of the undertaking size or environmental requirements Farmers’ opinions level of effort, aesthetic pleasure Planners’ opinions “a lot of the decision-making is down to the planner”

Utility maximisation theory Effort required changing management practices time spent at each task Other farm and farmer characteristics appreciation of aesthetic beauty concern for particular species Model Multinomial logit model using maximum likelihood estimation All outcomes are compared to a base case scenario

Management groupings for biodiversity undertaking options Table 2: List of 26 biodiversity undertaking options grouped according to management changes expected of farmers

Table 3: Results from a multinomial logit, which looks at the likelihood of farmers participating in biodiversity undertaking management categories 1 and 2 in comparison with category 3 (n = 1,101) ***significant at 1% Preliminary results

Set aside: Environmental value? Farmland: Economic value?

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