Perceived Legitimacy of Agricultural Support Payments

Abstract

Support payments to agricultural producers make up a significant proportion of government budgets across the world. In Europe, the justification for support payments has shifted from support of production towards rural income support conditional on the provision of environmental public goods. However, there is evidence to suggest an undersupply of public goods, which may eventually undermine the justification for support payments. Therefore, there is a need to reconfigure agricultural policy to facilitate delivery of sustainable development. In the first instance, this means re-establishing the legitimacy of support payments, which rests on the social acceptance of citizens for such payments. In this talk, I will present a study that used a factorial survey experiment to assess social acceptance of support payments based on the description of an individual farmer and their farm. Findings of this study can be used to inform priorities for legitimate policies of agricultural support schemes, to identify areas of consensus or disagreement regarding social acceptance of support, and to facilitate effective communication on agricultural support policy. I will also discuss the use of factorial survey experiments to investigate dimensions of social acceptance in agricultural and land use context.

Speaker

Klaus Glenk - Scotland's Rural College

Bio

Professor Klaus Glenk leads the Sustainable Ecosystems Team at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC). His research focuses on the micro-analysis of consumer and household decisions. He has more than 20 years of experience in the appraisal of environmental policy interventions including climate change mitigation and adaptation in agriculture, biodiversity conservation and water management. Another strand of work includes investigating resource use decisions, technology choice and contract design for incentive-based land management schemes. He has been PI and Co-I on several projects for NERC, EU FP7, and for government bodies and committees (DEFRA, SEPA, SG Rural Affairs and the Environment Portfolio Strategic Research Programme).