Bionote
Anna Massfeller is a doctoral student in Agricultural Economics at the University of Bonn’s Institute for Food and Resource Economics. Her research combines data science methods and behavioral economics to better understand farmers’ decision-making processes. In her research, she often collects primary data through surveys and experiments to explore the factors influencing farmers’ adoption of novel technologies. With a focus on environmental sustainability and practical policy design, Anna examines how farmers respond to various incentives and innovations, including result-based agri-environmental schemes, digital decision support tools, and weeding robots.
Presentation Abstract
Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are commonly used to reduce negative impacts on biodiversity by intensive agricultural production. Whether action- or results-based, the efficiency of PES schemes in terms of conservation benefit per costs, hinges on cost-effective monitoring, actions farmers are rewarded for, appropriate biodiversity indicators and, farmers’ acceptance. Despite expectations that novel technologies, such as weeding robots, will reduce monitoring costs, the potential impact of their widespread use on optimal PES design for biodiversity conservation in arable farming remains unexplored. Our study investigates 1) the influence of weeding robots on optimal scheme design and 2) the challenges and options that arise for future PES scheme design. To this end, we use a simulation model to systematically compare how the availability of weeding robots changes the preferability of action-based versus results-based payments under various production and management conditions. This study sheds light on the transformative potential of weeding robots in optimising PES for biodiversity conservation. The results indicate that the difference in efficiency between action- and results-based schemes vanishes if robots can perform biodiversity-sensitive actions. Further, we find that it is even more important for the future design of PES to be able to define multidimensional biodiversity goals – a major challenge calling for interdisciplinary research.
Co-Authors: Marie Zingsheim, Alireza Ahmadi, Elin Martinsson, Hugo Storm