Nearly all Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) offer farmers stable annual payments over the duration of the contract. Yet AES are often intended to be a transition tool, thus decreasing payment sequences would appear particularly attractive for farmers. The standard discounted utility model supports this notion by predicting that individuals will prefer a decreasing sequence of payments if the total sum of outcomes is constant. Nevertheless, the literature shows that numerous mechanisms, such as increasing productivity, anticipatory pleasure and loss aversion can incline farmers to favor an increasing sequence of payments. To understand what drives farmers' preferences for different payment sequences, we propose a review of the mechanisms highlighted by the literature in psychology and economics. We then analyze farmers' preferences for stable, increasing or decreasing payments through a choice experiment (CE) survey of 123 French farmers, about 15% of those contacted. Overall, farmers do not present a clear willingness to depart from the usual stable payments. Moreover, we find a significant aversion to decreasing payments in farmers with a lower discount rate and in those more willing to take risks than the median farmer, contradicting the discounted utility model.

在合同期限内，几乎所有的农业环境计划（AES）都为农民提供了稳定的年度付款。然而，AES通常旨在用作过渡工具，因此减少付款顺序对于农民而言似乎特别有吸引力。标准的折现效用模型通过预测如果结果的总和是恒定的，个人将倾向于减少付款顺序来支持这一观点。然而，文献表明，许多机制，例如提高生产率，预期的愉悦感和避免损失，可以促使农民倾向于增加付款顺序。为了了解驱动农民选择不同付款方式的原因，我们建议对心理学和经济学文献所强调的机制进行回顾。然后我们分析农民的 通过对123名法国农民进行的选择试验（CE）调查，发现稳定，增加或减少付款的偏好，约占所接触农民的15％。总体而言，农民没有明显的意愿放弃通常的稳定付款。此外，我们发现折扣率较低的农民和愿意承担风险的农民比中位数农民更愿意减少付款，这与折扣的效用模型相矛盾。