Search

the greening of agriculture in Europe depends for a large part on the willingness of farmers to voluntarily change their practices – farmers receive subsidies for greening their practices but this is not sufficient to trigger the required transformation. In this chapter we assess the drivers of a representative sample of Dutch farmers to change their farming practices. Generally, the expectation of policy-makers is that innovative farmers (“the frontrunners”) will inspire others (“the followers”), but there has been limited research to analyse how frontrunner farmers differ from more follower type of farmers, and what this may imply in terms of policy. We present the results of a survey among a diverse set of farmers in the Netherlands, and analyse the behavioural and financial-economic factors that explain whether famers have invested in nature-inclusive practices on their land. We find that access to subsidies for agri-environmental management and premium prices are important, but that risk attitudes and intrinsic motivations also strongly affect farmer behaviour. Our findings suggest that policies that lower the risks of new farming practices, stimulate peer learning, facilitate hands-on advice for nature-inclusive practices, and provide financial resources for greening the farm, are likely to have a substantial impact on the transformation of agriculture. In addition, we find that frontrunner decisions are affected by different factors than follower decisions, implying one-size-fits-all policies aimed at enhancing an agricultural transition are likely to be ineffective, or at least inefficient.

We investigate the role of financial advice in shaping the composition of household portfolios in Great Britain. Advice is associated with a reallocation of wealth away from real estate and towards bonds and stocks, especially when households seek financial advice "for investments". Having a consultation with a stockbroker has a particularly large effect on the portfolio share in stocks. However, even free financial advice has a positive effect on the shares in bonds and stocks, compared to not receiving advice. Finally, we find a positive association between alternative measures of portfolio risk and the composition of the portfolio, whilst accounting for financial advice.