Learning about best management practices: Theory and experimentation under the umbrella of crop insurance
Abstract
Decision Support Systems (DSS) with embedded best management practices help reduce pesticide use. However, costly experimentation is necessary to learn about the quality of their data processing and recommendation models. We study farmers’ choices to try such a DSS. Due to order effects, learning can be inefficient and stop after inadequate recommendations, leading to crop losses. Subsidizing crop insurance conditional on DSS use is a cost-effective policy to foster experimentation. A 4-year living lab on-farm experiment involving French wine cooperatives, an insurer, and researchers supports our theoretical results on learning dynamics and provides additional insight into information requirements for subsidized green insurance.
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Flagged first, then by citations
- Authors
- Aubert, C., Raineau, Y., & Raynal, M.
- Affiliations
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Institut Français de la Vigne et du Vin (FR)
- Venue
- European Review of Agricultural Economics
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2025-12-19
- Volume
- 53
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 341-373
- ISSN
- 0165-1587 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-3618
- OpenAlex
- W4417523388
- Cited by
- 0
- References
- 50
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model (vor)
- Locations
- European Review of Agricultural Economics (publishedVersion)
- Toulouse 1 Capitole Publications (Université Toulouse I Capitole) (acceptedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- VitiREV
- Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region
- Eco-Phyto II (ARRUP-VICO, 20-PCPA-0010)
- ANR (ANR-17-EURE-0010)
- IdEx université de Bordeaux
- GPR HOPE
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Soil Science › Agricultural risk and resilience
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › General Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Agricultural Innovations and Practices
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- best management practices, decision support system, crop insurance, pesticide reduction, experimentation, order effects, learning dynamics, subsidized insurance, green insurance, living labs, on-farm trials, wine cooperatives, environmental policy
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