Purpose

Farmers often decide simultaneously on crop production or input use without knowing other farmers' decisions. Anticipating the behavior of other farmers can increase financial performance. This paper investigates the role of other famers' behaviors and other contextual factors in farmers' simultaneous production decisions.

Design/methodology/approach

Market entry games are a common method for investigating simultaneous production decisions. However, so far they have been conducted with abstract tasks and by untrained subjects. The authors extend market entry games by using three real contexts: pesticide use, animal welfare and wheat production, in an incentivized framed field experiment with 323 German farmers.

Findings

The authors find that farmers take different decisions under identical incentive structures for the three contexts. While context plays a major role in their decisions, their expectations about the behavior of other farmers have little influence on their decision.

Originality/value

The paper offers new insights into the decision-making behavior of farmers. A better understanding of how farmers anticipate the behavior of other farmers in their production decisions can improve both the performance of individual farms and the allocational efficiency of agricultural and food markets.

中文翻译：

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农业领域中的同时生产决策：农药使用，动物福利和小麦生产的实验研究

目的

农民经常在不了解其他农民决定的情况下，同时决定作物生产或投入使用。预期其他农民的行为可以提高财务绩效。本文研究了其他农民行为和其他背景因素在农民同时生产决策中的作用。

设计/方法/方法

市场进入游戏是调查同时进行的生产决策的常用方法。但是，到目前为止，它们是由抽象任务和未经培训的人员进行的。作者通过对323名德国农民进行的激励性框架田间试验，通过使用三种真实环境来扩展市场进入游戏：农药使用，动物福利和小麦生产。

发现

作者发现，在三种情况下，农民在相同的激励结构下做出不同的决定。尽管环境在他们的决策中起着主要作用，但他们对其他农民行为的期望对他们的决策影响很小。

创意/价值

本文为农民的决策行为提供了新的见解。更好地了解农民如何在其生产决策中预期其他农民的行为，可以改善单个农场的绩效以及农业和食品市场的分配效率。