Technology Adoption
& Mechanisms
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“…(production) systems are as much behavioral as technical. They
require daily interactions within the … bureaucracies, among farmers, and between the bureaucracies and the
farmers . . . Yet the thought, time and effort devoted to understanding and dealing with behavioral questions
are infinitesimal by comparison to that devoted to the … (natural and physical science) issues.”
Committee on the Future of Irrigation (1996, p. 12, citing Levine) |
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- Project Goals
- Technology Adoption
- Provide a knowledge base about farmer motivation with respect to adoption and use of carbon sequestration
technologies (including costs)
- Empirically test whether current social theories characterize motivations and behaviors
- Develop a new theory to explain the motivational and behavioral track or evolution of farmers
- Collect “personological typology” data using the latest internet and GIS technology
- Mechanism and Incentives
- Explore the Nebraska institutional setting
- Could the Natural Resource Districts be the aggregator?
- What laws would we have to change?
- Research the national and international scene
- Explore theoretical frameworks and methods
- Sub-contract with the UNL-Public Policy Center (PPC contracted with the Carbon Sequestration Advisory
Committee to provide an overview of the legal, regulatory and economic situation)
- Search for funding
- Background
- State of the Technology Adoption (Behavior) Literature (after Nowak and Korsching, 1998)
- Lack of consistency on how to measure behavior
- Adoption needs to be treated as an ongoing process
- Inadequate sampling of the biophysical context
- Inadequate attention to matching practice to setting
- Improve modeling across people, time and place
- Good scientific base given the paucity in resources devoted to the human side
- Mechanism Types
- Regulatory: Government mandates to sequester carbon in agricultural lands, e.g., require sequestration to receive payments
- Pigouvian taxes and subsidies: Tax emissions (or, generally tax consumers of electricity) with green payments to farmers for practices
- Coasian (Paretian) markets: Evolving emissions and carbon commodity markets
- “Cap and Trade” Mechanisms
- State of the Mechanisms Literature
- Sulfur emissions allowances, “cap and trade” experiment (see Ellerman et al., 2000)
- Scientific information also available on the “cap and trade” experiences in the fishery (ITQs) and in water rights/emissions trading (see Colby, 2000)
- New area of scientific inquiry: Has historically been for the past 30+ years largely theoretical, speculative, back to Dales (1968)
- Project Description
- Technology Adoption
- Draw on the scientific base in social psychology and metaeconomics
- Focus groups + Survey 1500 farmers:
- Saunders County, NE: Irrigated corn/soybeans (actually a mixed dryland, irrigated area)
- Cedar, Dixon, Dakota and Thurston Counties: Dryland corn/soybeans
- Polk County: Continuously irrigated corn
- Statistical Modeling (probability of action is a function of ego, empathy, symbiotic interaction, ability,
capital, habit and location)
- Technology & Adoption and Mechanisms Interaction
- Behavioral (Technology Adoption) research feeds into this Mechanisms research
- Mechanisms designed on such a base will be appropriate to the personological typologies in the western Corn Belt and northern Great Plains
- Mechanisms research in turn helps understand and explain the actions of farmers affecting:
- Flows of carbon into and out of the soil stock of carbon
- Level of the soil stock of carbon that is maintained
- Progress
- Saunders county study:
- Completed the survey in 2002-2003
- Completed M.S. Thesis: Kruse, Colby E. Explaining Farmer Behavior in Relation to Sequestering Carbon on Nebraska Farms. Unpublished M.S. Thesis. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, July, 2003
- Paper presented at the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics/International Association for Research in Economic Psychology joint conference, in Philadelphia: Kruse, C., Sautter, J., and Lynne, G. “Resolving the Conflict in Joint Interests over Global Warming.” Working Paper. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, July, 2003.:
- Cedar, Dakota, Dixon and Thurston Counties
- Survey completed in spring of 2004
- Data analysis in process
- Popular papers in Cornhusker Economics:
- Extension programming:
- Presented an overview of decision making about carbon sequestration to the farmer participants in the Center for Rural Affairs project on Carbon Sequestration, February, 2003
- Yearly presentations to the Nebraska Carbon Sequestration Advisory Committee since inception of the Committee
- Staff
- Gary Lynne (Professor)
- Colby Kruse (Graduate Assistant (MS))
- John Sautter (Graduate Sssistant (PhD))
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