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The purpose of this paper is to check which role-bounded rationality might play as an explanation for farmers’ missing willingness to adopt weather index insurance (WII). WII is an innovative risk management instrument that causes low administration and regulation costs. Moreover, index insurance is plagued neither by moral hazard nor by adverse selection. Nonetheless, WII has been little used to date in agriculture.

An extra-laboratory experiment in the form of a multi-period, single-person business simulation game is conducted with farmers as experimental subjects to investigate the reasons for the low willingness to adopt WII.

First, the demand for WII decreases as the premium loading increases. Second, a transparent communication of the loading reduces demand, indicating that farmers refrain from transactions if they feel that the other party earns (too) much money. Third, communicating to farmers that the index insurance has been subsidized raises demand even though insurance costs in terms of loading are kept constant. This can be taken as an indication that farmers interpret subsidies as a signal for profitable action.

Using an experimental approach and going beyond observational research, this study investigates the prominent question of farmers’ risk management and innovation adoption behavior, and, in particular, the behavioral effect of subsidies. Using a randomized controlled trial, the real behavior of real subjects with real incentives is studied under controlled experimental conditions. Compared to prior studies, the external validity of the experiment is improved by recruiting farmers instead of a convenience group of students.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer preferences for boxes of eggs which are produced without the culling of male layer-type chicks in layer hen production and, furthermore, to investigate consumer preferences for labels from different certifying bodies.

An online survey including a discrete choice experiment was conducted among 526 German consumers in 2018 and early 2019. Mixed logit models in preference and willingness to pay (WTP) space were estimated.

The preferred alternative is gender determination of incubated eggs, but also dual-use (DU) poultry with free-range rearing of cockerels was approved. Labels from public authorities and the Animal Protection Organisation were highly approved. In contrast, retailers were not considered suitable for the certification of production claims.

A hypothetical setting was employed. A revealed preferences approach is suggested for future research.

Evidence for a wide approval of in ovo gender determination was found. Free-range rearing of cockerels was the most promising for the marketing of DU poultry products. Furthermore, public authorities and well-established third parties should engage in the field of animal welfare labelling.

This is the first study focussing on preferences and WTP for alternatives to chick culling, which will soon be available on the market, and for institutions certifying production claims. Findings help political decision makers, when looking for alternatives to the culling of day-old chicks, which are considered more acceptable by the public.

Digital credit is spreading rapidly across Sub-Saharan Africa and holds potential for financial inclusion and female financial autonomy. Women in developing economies have long been targeted by microfinance institutions due to the women’s reliability and positive spillover effects. Yet, adoption rates for digital financial innovations remain moderate among rural women in Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors explore whether female preferences for digital and conventional credit differ from males.

The authors conduct a Discrete Choice Experiment with 420 smallholder farmers in central Madagascar, one of the region's poorest countries, to assess preferences for selected digital and conventional credit attributes.

Results of the mixed logit model and the comparison of the willingness-to-pay via Poe-test suggest high general demand for both credit forms. The demand of female respondents is higher than that of males, suggesting that they might be underserved. This holds for both credit forms. However, differences in willingness to pay for the credit attributes are mostly not statistically significant, indicating that designing gender-specific services may not be advisable.

This article is believed to be the first to assess and compare gendered willingness to pay for digital and conventional credit. The study’s findings give valuable insights to decision-makers in development politics as well as the fintech industry.

Index insurance is promising to mitigate drought-related income losses in agriculture. To reduce the basis risk of index insurance, the integration of satellite data is of growing interest in research. The objective of this study is to obtain preliminary evidence regarding farmers' perceived usefulness (PU) of satellite-based index insurance.

By modifying the transtheoretical model of change to a transtheoretical model of PU, German farmers' gradual PU of satellite-based index insurance was investigated.

The results show that the average farmer perceives satellite-based index insurance as useful. It can be particularly seen that a higher level of education in an agricultural context as well as higher trust in index insurance products increases farmers' gradual PU. Moreover, higher relative weather-related income losses increase farmers' gradual PU.

It is recommended to apply latent variables when conducting future investigations regarding farmers' PU.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to explore farmers' PU of upcoming satellite-based index insurance by modifying and applying the transtheoretical model in a new way.

Urbanization is a main driver of the transformation from agricultural-based economies to service-based economies. At the same time, urbanization might also alter preferences and attitudes such as risk and time preferences that contribute to economic growth and foster this transition. To study the effect of urbanization, few studies have compared individual time or risk preferences in rural and urban settings, reporting mixed results. This study analyses how risk and time preferences alter along the rural–urban interface and assesses the correlation of socio-economic, socio-cultural and demographic characteristics with these preferences. Using such an approach provides insights how preferences are altered in areas of transition as the rural–urban interface mirrors different stages of urbanization.

Using experimental approaches, risk attitudes and time preferences of 1,117 agricultural and non-agricultural households were elicited along the rural–urban interface of the fast-developing Indian megacity Bengaluru in 2016/17. The study reports joint estimations of risk and time preferences and discusses the influence of urbanization on these preferences.

Results show that households are on average slightly risk-averse and highly impatient. The results also indicate a decline in discount rates towards rural areas while risk preferences do not considerably differ between those areas. This puzzling result may be explained by difference response of rural and urban areas to the Demonetization policy of the Indian government in 2016.

The research design compares jointly estimated risk and time preferences of agricultural and non-agricultural households of a rapidly urbanizing area in a low-medium income country.

Satellite-retrieved vegetation health (VH) indices are under active consideration to be integrated into weather index insurance to reduce the basis risk and increase the attractiveness to farmers. The objective of this study is to obtain a deeper understanding of the hedging effectiveness (HE) of the satellite-retrieved VH indices.

By using winter wheat yield records from 79 farms in Northern and Eastern Germany over 20 years, we designed index insurance based on three satellite indices to explore their HE: the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), the Temperature Condition Index (TCI) and the Vegetation Health Index (VHI) with a spatial resolution of 1 × 1 km. As the benchmark, a meteorological index related to precipitation is employed.

The results indicate that, on average, the TCI and VHI outperform the benchmark index in a statistically significant way. However, considerable differences across regions are observed. In particular, the highest HE, and therefore basis risk reduction, was found for regions with sandy soils in Eastern Germany.

Insurers can be advised to accelerate the research and development of satellite-based index insurance in Eastern Germany. By considering our insurance design, products with low transaction costs and therefore comparatively low loading factors can be offered to farmers.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that uses a large sample to explore the HE of index insurance based on satellite-retrieved VH indices by focusing on different regions in a country.

Satellite-based weather index insurance has recently been considered in order to reduce the high basis risk of station-based weather index insurance. However, the use of satellite data with a relatively low spatial resolution has not yet made it possible to determine the satellite indices free of disturbing landscape elements such as mountains, forests and lakes.

In this context, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was used based on both Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) (250 × 250 m) and high-resolution Landsat 5/8 (30 × 30 m) images to investigate the effect of a higher spatial resolution of satellite-based weather index contracts for hedging winter wheat yields. For three farms in north-east Germany, insurance contracts both at field and farm level were designed.

The results indicate that with an increasing spatial resolution of satellite data, the basis risk of satellite-based weather index insurance contracts can be reduced. However, the results also show that the design of NDVI-based insurance contracts at farm level also reduces the basis risk compared to field level. The study shows that higher-resolution satellite data are advantageous, whereas satellite indices at field level do not reduce the basis risk.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, the effect of increasing spatial resolution of satellite images for satellite-based weather index insurance is investigated for the first time at the field level compared to the farm level.

Understanding farmer and consumer behavior is essential to the successful implementation of behavior change interventions. The purpose of this study is to summarize existing research, provide a comprehensive overview of nudge interventions, and identify important trends in behavioral agricultural economics. Research on nudge interventions can help policymakers encourage farmers and consumers to change their behavior in desired direction like switching to organic agriculture or eco-labeled products and promote innovation in sustainable agriculture.

The paper contains a bibliometric analysis of nudge research in general and agricultural economics as well as a literature review of the 53 empirical studies on nudge interventions between 2003 and 2023.

The frequency of nudge research in all research fields and in agricultural economics has increased over the years. This study summarizes nudge interventions that can be used by farmers and consumers on a variety of agricultural economic issues. Information, social norms, and social comparison as nudge interventions are most prominent in the publications, while green nudges have not been researched to a greater extent.

This study provides a comprehensive overview of nudge research in agricultural economics with potential for theoretical and policy implications. It highlights potential nudge interventions among farmers and consumers that can be applied in practices.

The purposes of the study are to compare the investment behavior of farmers in Kazakhstan as a transforming country and in Germany as a Western industrialized country as well as to analyze whether the investment behavior of farmers is consistent with the normative benchmarks of the net present value approach or the real options (RO) approach.

The paper conducted an experiment with 100 Kazakhstani and 106 German farmers. The first part of the experiment describes an investment opportunity in an agricultural and in a non-agricultural treatment. The second part refers to a Holt and Laury lottery to determine farmers' risk attitude that could influence the investment behavior.

The results show that both approaches do not provide an exact prediction of the investment behavior of farmers. However, German farmers invest later than Kazakhstani farmers meaning that the investment behavior of German farmers is closer to the RO approach. This might imply that German farmers are more likely to take into account the value of flexibility when making investment decisions than Kazakhstani farmers.

Since investment behavior is country-specific, it is worth investigating whether farmers from other transforming countries would show different investment behavior compared to farmers from other Western industrialized countries. Furthermore, decision-making behavior related to investments could be different from that related to disinvestments. Therefore, it may be interesting to analyze the disinvestment decisions of farmers in transforming and Western industrialized countries.

The results show that it is not acceptable to apply the results of experiments investigating the investment behavior of entrepreneurs in a transforming country to entrepreneurs in a Western industrialized country and vice versa. Furthermore, training for farmers is needed because there is still room for improvement in order to achieve the RO benchmark. Finally, taking into account RO effects could improve the results of policy impact analysis.

This is the first experimental study comparing the investment behavior of farmers from a transforming country and from a Western industrialized country.

This study aims to examine farmers' decision to use smartphone agricultural applications (SAAs) and how SAAs adoption impact their land transfer behaviors in terms of the current land transfer-in area (LTA) and the future willingness to renew land transfer-in after it expires (WTR).

This study provides empirical evidence on the relationship between farmers' use of SAAs and land transfer choice, using a field survey data of 752 rural farm households in 2020 from Sichuan province of China. The endogenous switching models are employed to address potential self-selection bias associated with voluntary SAAs use and to quantitatively examine the impacts of SAAs use on land transfer choice.

The empirical results reveal that SAAs significantly improves the probability of transfer-in of more land by 39.10%. We find SAAs use has heterogeneous impacts on land transfer-in choice in the groups of agricultural technology, extension service, marketing and credit. Besides, we also find that SAAs use exerts highly positive and significant impact on farmers with less land area transfer-in. Moreover, SAAs can increase the probability of farmers' willingness to renew the land transfer-in by 30%.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to explore the quantitative relationship between the use of SAAs and farm households' land transfer choice. The findings of this work can provide policy-related insights to help government promote the development of digital applications in the agricultural sector.