农户环境友好型农业技术选择行为及异质性基于离散选择实验的研究

目的 中国是世界上最大的化肥和农药使用国,农业绿色发展面临严峻挑战,这与缺少国家层面和农田管理层面为农户专门设计的环境友好型技术及配套激励政策不无关系。方法 文章利用离散选择实验（Discrete choice experiment,DCE）,以环境友好型农业技术（Agri-environmental technologies,AETs）及配套政策为基础设计农业环境政策方案（Agri-environmental schemes,AES）。用混合Logit模型（Mixed Logit model,MXL）来揭示农户在假想的AES情景下对AETs的选择行为及影响因素,证实农户偏好异质性的存在。后续条件Logit模型（Conditional Logit model,CLM）引入交互变量进一步揭示农户的偏好异质性来源。结果 研究表明补偿额度及农户社会经济变量是影响其参与AES的主要因素,且相对于退出保持现有耕种方式不变农户更偏好于实施AES。该研究还证实了农户对AETs选择偏好存在异质性,因此灵活的政策设计是AES顺利实施的重要保障。结论 鉴于对农户选择偏好及异质性的充分了解,政策制定者可以科学地制定和微调农业环境政策,设计AES以最大限度地减少各类农户反对意见,吸引绝大多数农户采纳AETs实践,提高项目参与率。     

Farm-scale ecological and economic impacts of agricultural change in the uplands

Recent decades have witnessed substantial losses of biodiversity in Europe, partly driven by the ecological changes associated with intensification of agricultural production. These changes have particularly affected avian (bird) diversity in marginal areas such as the uplands of the UK. Future trends for upland birds will likely be impacted by changes in agricultural support regimes, such as those currently envisaged in on-going reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy. We developed integrated ecological-economic models, using seven different indicators of biodiversity based on avian species richness and individual bird densities. The models represent six different types of farms which are typical for the UK uplands, and were used to assess the outcomes of different agricultural futures. Our results show that the impacts of these future agricultural scenarios on farm incomes, land use and biodiversity are very diverse across policy scenarios and farm types. Moreover, each policy scenario produces un-equal distributions of farm income changes and gains and losses in alternative biodiversity indicators. This shows that generalisations of the effects of policy and pricing changes on farm incomes, land uses and biodiversity can be misleading. Our results also suggest that a focus on umbrella species or biodiversity indicators (such as total species richness) can miss important compositional effects.     

Sustaining multifunctional agricultural landscapes: comparing stakeholder perspectives in New York (US) and England (UK)

This paper compares levels of public subsidy and community stakeholders’ perspectives on American and British approaches to managing agricultural landscapes. In the US, changes in agriculture have played out on the landscape (i.e. countryside) with far less discussion about nonfood, public benefits derived from the working agricultural landscape. British stakeholders outlined a purposeful approach to landscape conservation and management programs, targeted at enhancing the agricultural system in support of landscape functions deemed to be of direct social value. In contrast, the New York stakeholder group was less comfortable with the idea of achieving a shared positive vision for the rural countryside, and more concerned with the negative consequences of agricultural production and greenfields conversion.     

Performance measurement of pension strategies: a case study of Danish life cycle products

The Danish pension markets of life cycle products have expanded considerably since its introduction in the beginning of the millennium. The market is maturing and pensioners have the choice between a wide area of different products. It is therefore about time that financial insurance technology is developed to guide the performance measurement of available products. In this paper we develop a simple first version of such a method and we investigate life cycle products recommended on the web of the four biggest commercial Danish pension companies on one day in February 2007. All considered products are outperformed by trivial benchmark products with constant stock proportion over time. Our approach is the following: for each life cycle product we first find a trivial benchmark product with the same long-term risk and then we compare the long-term return of the two equivalent products. We primarily consider value at risk and tail value at risk as risk measures, but we also include a study where the fair value of an interest guarantee is used as risk measure. We consider both long-term mean returns and long-term median returns. We hope that our new method will be regarded as a first step towards a scientifically based ranking of the quality of pension products.     

The political motivations of ethical consumers

Consumer‐driven labelling schemes such as Fairtrade and the Forest Stewardship Council, are based upon several assumptions of consumer decision making and behaviour. This study aimed to test the validity of some of these assumptions, including the belief that consumers are acting ‘on behalf’ of workers and communities in economically developing countries by supporting fair and ethical trade. It examines the political motivations underlying ethical consumption, such as its relationship to other forms of political activism, reasons behind high purchase frequency and how existing values interact with consumption choices. Drawing upon the results of a series of six focus groups with 58 participants and a nationally representative panel‐based survey of 1014 Australian consumers, this paper argues that many of the factors involved in consumer decision making are inconsistent with the assumptions made by private economic governance schemes in attempting to harness consumer power, calling into question the effectiveness and legitimacy of such schemes. However, by tailoring the marketing strategies to different types of consumers, along with suppliers and retailers, these schemes can potentially increase their effectiveness.     

Factors Affecting Farmers’ Participation in Agri‐environmental Measures: A Northern Italian Perspective

Agri‐environmental measures play an important role in Italian rural areas, as shown by the financial commitment to the Rural Development programmes. However, in contrast with other European Union (EU) countries, policy‐makers still have limited experience on how farmers approach environmental incentive schemes. This paper casts new light on this issue from a northern Italian perspective. The rationale of the farmers’ decision‐making process is explored using two multinomial models. The first explains the probability of non‐participation or participation in one of three specific agri‐environmental measures. The model outcomes show that labour‐intensive farming types and high dependency of household income on farming activity constrain farmers’ participation, whereas previous experience, easy‐to‐implement environmentally friendly farm practices and adequate compensation of extra costs encourage participation. The second model explores the effect of farmers’ attitudes and beliefs on their predispositions towards participation in any of the schemes. The results highlight that, besides income factors, the farm's future in the business, and the relationship with neighbouring farmers and their opinions on environmentally friendly practices all have significant effects on adoption of agri‐environmental measures. The paper concludes by suggesting that farmers’ attitudes and beliefs, as well as the local behavioural influences, have to be taken into account when designing and communicating agri‐environmental measures.     

The effect of decoupling on marginal agricultural systems: Implications for farm incomes,land use and upland ecology

In many parts of Europe, decades of production subsidies led to the steady intensification of agriculture in marginal areas. The recent decoupling of subsidies from production decisions means that the future of farming in these areas is uncertain. For example, in the uplands of the United Kingdom, an area important both for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service provision, hill farmers steadily increased stocking densities in response to headage payments but must now reconfigure farm businesses to account for the shift to the Single Farm Payment scheme. We examined hill farming in the Peak District National Park as a case study into the future of marginal agriculture after decoupling. We surveyed 44 farm businesses and from this identified six representative farm types based on enterprise mix and land holdings. We developed linear programming models of production decisions for each farm type to examine the impacts of policy changes, comparing the effects of decoupling with and without agri-environment and hill farm support, and evaluating the effects of removal of the Single Farm Payment. The main effects of decoupling are to reduce stocking rates, and to change the mix of livestock activities. Agri-environmental schemes mediate the income losses from decoupling, and farmers are predicted to maximise take up of new Environmental Stewardship programmes, which have both positive and negative feedback effects on livestock numbers. Finally, removal of the Single Farm Payment leads to negative net farm incomes, and some land abandonment. These changes have important implications for ongoing debates about how ecological service flows can be maintained from upland areas, and how marginal upland farming communities can be sustained.     

Contract farming,contract design and smallholder livelihoods*

Contract farming has gained in importance in many developing countries. Previous studies analysed effects of contracts on smallholder farmers’ welfare, yet mostly without considering that different types of contractual relationships exist. Here, we examine associations between contract farming and farm household income in the oil palm sector of Ghana, explicitly differentiating between two types of contracts, namely simple marketing contracts and more comprehensive resource-providing contracts. Moreover, we look at different income sources to better understand how both contracts are linked to farmers’ livelihood strategies. We use cross-sectional survey data and regression models. Issues of endogeneity are addressed through measuring farmers' willingness-to-participate in contracts and using this indicator as an additional covariate. Farmers with both types of contracts have significantly higher household incomes than farmers without a contract, yet with notable differences in terms of the income sources. Farmers with a marketing contract allocate more household labour to off-farm activities and thus have higher off-farm income. In contrast, farmers with a resource-providing contract have larger oil palm plantations and thus higher farm incomes. The findings suggest that the two contract types are associated with different livelihood strategies and that disaggregated analysis of different income sources is important to better understand possible underlying mechanisms.     

Dynamics in national agri-environmental policy implementation under changing EU policy priorities: Does one size fit all?

Over the past 30 years, Agri-Environmental Policies (AEP) in the EU have developed with relative national autonomy and according to the subsidiarity principle. The environmental directives represent an increase in EU-level environmental ambitions and challenge the current implementation of EU AEP by creating an increasingly demanding set of regulations with which each member state must comply. National AEP implementation may, however, maintain original characteristics and fail to adopt or transform as EU policy implementation proceeds or when EU policies develop. This creates a potential gap between EU policies and national policy implementation resulting in the ensuing national policy dynamics and adaptations becoming issues of interest. This raises a central question regarding the extent to which national AEP implementation can help us predict whether AEP will be suitable to achieve environmental directive objectives nationally in the future. In this paper, we first investigate the dynamics in the implementation of national Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) through changes in (i) AES policy objectives over time, (ii) administrative implementation structures, and (iii) administrative policy decision structures in the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, Austria and Romania. Second, we examine the extent to which various factors have influenced the development of national policies over time. The study identifies development based on the theory of ‘process of institutional change’, i.e. we qualitatively estimate the costs of change based on proposed factors including economic conditions in relation to AES implementation, political institutional capacity, policy legacy, policy preferences, and current discourse. On this background, we identify differences in implementation strategies or outcomes in terms of inertia, absorption and transformation, which are characteristic of the national responses to changing AEP at the EU level. We discuss AES dynamics; whether policy content or structures should be in focus for future policy design and the implications of these findings for the future role of AEP in fulfilling environmental directives and argue why a one size fits all rule does not adequately cover current AES development.     

新型农村合作医疗筹资瓶颈破解:制度解析与重构

新型农村合作医疗筹资瓶颈是制约其发展的关键和核心问题.当前新型农村合作医疗筹资困境的成因主要源于制度设计层面,其制度性缺陷主要表现在制度本身的社会保险性质的弱化;三方筹资主体的筹资责任、筹资标准、筹资比例界定难;基金监督与管理的法律依据缺失等方面.必须对制度进行重构才能实现可持续运转,而不是简单的修修补补.