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Valuing Risk Tradeoffs And Voluntary Insect Reduction, Luanne Lohr, Timothy Park, Leon Higley

Department of Entomology: Faculty Publications

Farmers’ willingness to voluntarily reduce insecticide use is not considered when regulatory approaches to environmental protection are proposed. Regulations that require behavior that would voluntarily be undertaken are excessive and economically inefficient. Using survey data from a contingent valuation scenario, we demonstrate the willingness of crop producers in four Midwestern states in the U.S. to trade yield losses for environmental risk reduction by eliminating an insecticide application. The mean acceptable yield loss for a sample of 1,138 producers in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Ohio is $8.25 per acre. Acceptable yield loss increases with the rated importance of environmental goods (fish, …