2025: Accelerating Farmer Adoption of Conservation Practices: Economic Experiment Evidence that Reduce Hypothetical Bias (TNC)
Nearly half of all lakes in the U.S. suffer from nutrient pollution, negatively impacting drinking water and recreation for millions of people. Saturated buffers – areas of perennial vegetation between agricultural fields and waterways – can improve water quality outcomes by minimizing soil and nutrient erosion. Cost and effort to install such buffers limit farmer adoption; targeted incentives help address these barriers. This collaborative project led by researchers at Cornell University and The Nature Conservancy seeks to generate accurate estimates of Midwestern farmers’ willingness to adopt conservation practices, and to identify the leakiest fields that will generate the greatest bang for the buck. These findings will inform policy and program recommendations to support sustainable agricultural systems and regional water quality improvement.
Cornell: Catherine Kling and Wendong Zhang (both Dyson/Applied Economics and Management)
TNC: Randy Dell, Emily Zimmerman, Shamitha Keerthi
Collaborators: Gregory Howard (East Carolina University)