Source: UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE submitted to NRP
CENTER FOR BEHAVIORAL AND EXPERIMENTAL AGRI-ENVIRONMENTAL AND RISK MANAGEMENT RESEARCH (CBEAR)
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1019677
Grant No.
2019-67023-29854
Cumulative Award Amt.
$1,000,000.00
Proposal No.
2018-08714
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Jul 15, 2019
Project End Date
Jul 14, 2024
Grant Year
2019
Program Code
[A1655]- Center for Behavioral and Experimental Economics for Agri-Environmental and Risk Management Policy Research
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
(N/A)
NEWARK,DE 19717
Performing Department
Applied Econ and Statistics
Non Technical Summary
The proposed Center for Behavioral and Experimental Agri-Environmental and Risk Management Research (CBEAR) will coordinate a consortium of researchers from major research and land-grant universities that applies the science of behavioral economics to understand the values and decision-making process of farmers, ranchers, and landowners. Building on lessons learned from a similar USDA-funded center created in 2014, CBEAR aims to develop behavioral insights that can be rapidly incorporated into USDA programs. This tight coupling of research and applications comes from CBEAR's use of controlled field experiments in novel experimental platforms and in field collaborations with USDA program managers and their partners. CBEAR will address four objectives: (1) Conduct high-quality behavioral economic research using experimental platforms and innovative designs to inform agri-environmental and risk management policies; (2) Coordinate with stakeholders to engage in research in which behavioral economics and experiments can assist USDA programs in achieving greater impacts, increase landowner satisfaction, and reduce program costs; (3) Expand and enhance the research base, by, among other activities, sharing infrastructure and resources with USDA staff and CBEAR affiliates, funding innovative research - including rapid-response grants to take advantage of quickly emerging opportunities-- and promoting a culture of careful design and analysis; and (4) Disseminate research insights to program managers, staff, and policymakers in ways that make the insights readily accessible, including presentations, trainings and digital materials. The University of Delaware, Johns Hopkins University, and Albany State University have committed substantial resources to developing a strong foundation on which these objectives can be achieved.
Animal Health Component
80%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
80%
Developmental
10%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
60560993010100%
Knowledge Area
605 - Natural Resource and Environmental Economics;

Subject Of Investigation
6099 - People and communities, general/other;

Field Of Science
3010 - Economics;
Goals / Objectives
Goal 1. Generate knowledge about human behavior that can be harnessed to improve the performance of programs that address risk management and agri-environmental issues. Goal 2. By providing exemplars for empirical research, CBEAR will support USDA and its partners to develop innovative program designs based on evidence and facilitate NIFA's efforts to strengthen the quality and reliability of the empirical research it funds.To support these goals, we have four objectives:Conduct high-quality behavioral economic research using experimental platforms and innovative designs to inform agri-environmental and risk management policies.Coordinate with stakeholders to engage in research in which behavioral economics and experiments can assist USDA programs in achieving greater impacts, increase landowner satisfaction, and reduce program costs. Stakeholders include USDA program managers, ERME Centers, non-governmental organizations, the agricultural sector, and scholars.Expand and enhance the research base, by, among other activities, sharing infrastructure and resources with USDA staff and CBEAR affiliates, funding innovative research - including rapid-response grants to take advantage of quickly emerging opportunities--and promoting a culture of careful design and analysis.Disseminate research insights to program managers, staff, and policymakers in ways that make the insights readily accessible, including presentations, trainings and digital materials.
Project Methods
The project applies experimental and behavioral science methods.The original CBEAR project leveraged ERS funding with additional sources of funds, including support from the associated universities, to create multiple platforms for field experiments. The four primary platforms, which are described in greater detail in the proposal, can be used to quickly establish new research projects involving a large sample of producers or consumers. We envision these platforms as long-term vehicles for collaborative research into new ideas and interventions, and the requested NIFA funds will allow this vision to be realized. The requested NIFA funding would enable us to do additional programming on the platforms, including increasing the seamlessness of the recruiting and payment functions. Additionally, we have outlined three areas of aspirational research, which will be conducted during the life of the proposed project.Existing Platforms:Agricultural Data Reporting Incentive Program (AgDRIP)Agricultural Values, Innovation & Stewardship Enhancement Project (Agricultural Values Project)Sustainability, Marketing, and Response to Risk & Technology Foods Project (SMARRT Foods)Farmer Preferences for the Timing of Payments (FPTPayments)Areas of aspirational researchPersistence of behavioral changesImpact evaluationComparing non-experimental and experimental designs to draw causal inferences

Progress 07/15/19 to 07/14/24

Outputs
Target Audience:CBEAR connects researchers and stakeholders who can benefit from behavioral and experimental economics research, such as USDA program officials, government stakeholders, and leaders of non-profit organizations. We also engage with economics and behavioral science researchers in academia, government, and nonprofit organizations who seek to be connected in discussions about cutting-edge research that uses experimental and behavioral economics methods to address agricultural, environmental, and risk management challenges. Once the research has been conducted, these findings are shared with stakeholders through academic articles, presentations at professional conferences, and the development and distribution of CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs. In particular, the CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs are designed to provide summaries in manners valuable to program administrators and implementers, as well as policymakers and other stakeholders, including USDA program managers, Extension Risk Management Education Centers, non-governmental organizations, the agricultural sector, and scholars with an ultimate goal of achieving greater impacts on the ground, increased landowner and customer satisfaction, and reduced program costs. Additionally, through frequent collaborations and trainings with USDA staff and researchers, CBEAR aims to foster a culture of experimentation within programs at USDA. This culture encourages agri-environmental program managers to use simple experimental designs to test new ideas and to develop credible evidence supporting strategies that can improve performance, reduce costs, and increase returns on investments. By providing exemplars for empirical research designs, CBEAR also aims to facilitate NIFA's efforts to strengthen the quality and reliability of the empirical research it funds. Changes/Problems:There were no major problems or changes. We continued to be active both in publishing previous research and continuing new and exciting projects. Overall, this was an extremely productive project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?CBEAR successfully facilitated and participated in approximately 75 training and professional development initiatives within this reporting period. These included a range of presentations and workshops, both independently and in collaboration with associated entities, at various platforms such as the AAEA annual meetings, AERE annual meetings, NAREA Annual meetings REECAP conferences, the Chesapeake Bay Trust conference, and CBEAR's own seminar series. These activities were primarily designed to benefit agri-environmental economists and graduate students who have foundational knowledge in this field but lack comprehensive formal training in applying behavioral and experimental economics or in risk management and agri-environmental policy formulation. These programs aimed to expose participants to the theories and empirical methods intrinsic to behavioral and experimental economics and illustrate how these concepts and methodologies can be leveraged to assess and influence policies and programs. Several of these initiatives also incorporated forums where researchers had the opportunity to receive constructive feedback from more seasoned colleagues about their experimental design and execution. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Many research projects highlighted in this report yielded significant information shared with relevant stakeholder communities, including policymakers and program managers. This was achieved not just through the conventional means of publishing in peer-reviewed journals and presenting at academic conferences but also through the dissemination of CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs and through the CBEAR website. The CBEAR's website was revamped in 2022 and acts as a central hub for information about ongoing projects and initiatives, as well as up-to-date contact information for CBEAR Fellows, program directors, staff, and postdoctoral researchers. The CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs, a series of concise articles, underline important insights or concepts from behavioral economics, present supporting or contradictory experimental evidence, and discuss their implications for USDA programs. Each Behavioral Insights Brief concludes with suggestions for experimental designs to aid USDA in testing innovations based on the brief's insights. Aside from topic-specific briefs, interesting publications are also highlighted. The website also features a link to CBEAR's YouTube channel, a repository for conference research talks, and animated videos illustrating behavioral science phenomena. Over the past year, we continued to host the CBEAR Seminar Series. This year, the focus was on articles that were part of the special issue of Food Policy, which CBEAR guest edited. This special issue was entitled "Applying Behavioral Science to Agriculture, Food, and Agri-Environmental Policy". This special issue received a very high level of interest as more than 105 articles were submitted. The special issue was scheduled to be published in October 2024 and included an introductory essay by Messer, Shukla and Ferraro. Each seminar spanned an hour, including a question and answer session moderated by Mark Masters. Promotion of the seminars was carried out through the CBEAR email list, other economics lists, and Twitter, leading to a highly positive response that exceeded our expectations. In total, over 500 attendees registered, with an average attendance of over 50 per seminar. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?As this is the final report for this grant, we can only report on CBEAR-related activities that are continuing through other means of financial support. We anticipate that our network of partners, both current and potential, will continue to be a source of valuable experience, enabling us to enhance the quantity and breadth of our experimental initiatives. Utilizing our experimental platform infrastructure, we will focus more on tracking the enduring effects of behavioral alterations stimulated by agri-environmental and risk management programs. It is critical to our mission that changes in consumer and producer behavior be sustainable over the long term. CBEAR will persist in aligning stakeholders to carry out research that can support USDA programs and will keep striving to expand the research base by sharing resources and financing groundbreaking studies. We are particularly excited about our work under a $650,000 grant from NIFA entitled "Beyond Adoption: Theory and Empirics to Predict and Understand the Sustained Use of Cover Crops by Agricultural Producers" (Ferraro, PI). We are also active in a $500,000 Cooperative Agreement with USDA Farm Service Agency to study how to improve the quality of land cover for land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program and have been supported by a $150,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation of $150,000 to extend this project and make connections to NRCS programs. Finally, we have received notification from the USDA Economic Research Service that they will be supporting CBEAR activities in 2024-2025 with a Cooperative Agreement worth $50,000.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The Center for Behavioral and Experimental Agri-Environmental and Risk Management (CBEAR) has been and remains deeply involved in coordinating a network of researchers from prominent research and land-grant universities. CBEAR's researchers apply behavioral economics to gain insights into the values and decision-making processes of consumers, farmers, ranchers, and landowners. Our work is focused on discovering new, applicable insights from behavioral economics that can be communicated and integrated into USDA programs and programs that are administrated at the state or regional level or by non-governmental organizations. This direct integration of research and applications is driven primarily by CBEAR's execution of controlled laboratory and field experiments on innovative experimental platforms, as well as through collaborations with USDA program managers and partners. The high-quality behavioral economic research we carried out, utilizing experimental platforms and innovative designs, has informed agri-environmental and risk management policies. Our research has achieved and will continue to achieve two main goals: (1) they help reveal the behavioral mechanisms that underlie the design of agricultural programs and policies, including evaluating the fundamental rationality assumption of classical economic theory, and (2) they demonstrate how variations in program characteristics, whether major (e.g., offering additional technical assistance instead of addition financial incentives) or minor (e.g., defaults, incentive framing), can influence crucial program performance metrics. Throughout the period under report, CBEAR has been very productive. As indicated in the "Products" section of the report, since the last reporting period a year ago, we have managed to publish or have accepted approximately 15 journal articles, including several in top journals such as Science, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Behavioral & Organization, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Food Policy, Land Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Water Resources Research, Environmental and Resource Economics, Experimental Economics, and Applied Economics Policy & Perspective. We have given over 30 selected and invited presentations. These are in addition to the products reported in previous years. Additionally, we are in various stages of developing more than 20 journal articles. We were pleased to have been invited by the National Academies of Science to prepare a commission report on how behavioral economics can enhance environmental, conservation, and climate change policy. Kent Messer wrote this report with two CBEAR postdoctoral researchers (Diya Ganguly and Lusi Xie). This report received very good reviews and was published in 2023 (Messer, Ganguly, and Xie). As shown in the details of the various presentations that CBEAR has given, these research projects have provided essential information that was distributed to groups that can benefit from it, including policymakers and program managers. Even amid the complications presented by the lingering COVID crisis, we managed to liaise with stakeholders and carry out research that can be beneficial. Meetings occurred between CBEAR leaders and members of the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD), National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA), and many others.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Ellis, S.F., O.M. Savchenko, and K.D. Messer . 2023. Is a Non-Representative Convenience Sample Good Enough? Insights from an Economic Experiment. Journal of the Economic Science Association. 9(2): 293-307.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Davidson, K. B. Khanal, K.D. Messer. 2024. Are Consumers No Longer Willing to Pay More for Local Foods? A Field Experiment." Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. 53(1): 45-65.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Li. T., L.A. Paul, K. D. Messer, and H.M. Kaiser. 2024. Its All Relative: Consistent Marginal Effects with Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept Framing in Experimental Auctions. Applied Economics.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Messer, K.D., D. Ganguly, and L. Xie. 2023. Applications of Behavioral Economics to Climate Change. Commissioned Report to the National Academy of Sciences for its report entitled: Future Directions for Applying Behavioral Economics to Policy.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Dineva, P. 1 , C. McGranaghan, K.D. Messer, L.H. Palm-Forster, L.A. Paul, and A.R. Siders. 2023. Promoting Spatial Coordination in Flood Buyouts in the United States: Four Strategies and Four Challenges from the Economics of Land Preservation Literature.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Langer, M. * , K. Davidson, B. McFadden, K.D. Messer. 2022. Peer Feedback Can Decrease Consumers Willingness to Pay for Food: Evidence from a Field Experiment. Appetite. 178, 106162.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Bass, D.A. * , B.R. McFadden, M. Costanigro, and K.D. Messer. 2022. Implicit and Explicit Biases for Recycled Water and Tap Water. Water Resources Research. 58(6).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Paul, L.A., O. Savchenko, M. Kecinski, and K.D. Messer. 2022. Nudge or Sludge? An Experimental Game Illustrating How Misunderstood Scientific Information Can Change Consumer Behavior. Applied Economics Teaching Resources. [2022 AETR Outstanding Article of the Year.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Meiselman, B.S., C. Weigel, P.J. Ferraro, M. Masters, K.D. Messer, O. Savchenko, and J.F. Suter. 2022. Lottery incentives and resource management: Evidence from the Agricultural Data Reporting Incentive Program (AgDRIP) Environmental and Resource Economics. 82 (4),847-867.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Parsons, G., L. Paul, and K.D. Messer. 2022. Demand for an Environmental Public Good in the Time of COVID-19: A Statewide Water Quality Referendum. Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis. 13(1): 107-119.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Palm-Forster, L.H., M. Griesinger * , J.M. Butler, J.R. Fooks, and K.D. Messer. 2022. Stewardship Signaling and Use of Social Pressure to Reduce Nonpoint Source Pollution. Land Economics. 98(4):618638.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2025 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers."
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2025 Citation: Ganguly D, S L Priestley, K Messer, M Palma."The Publics Puzzling Reluctance to Take Private Action to Identify and Mitigate Exposure to PFAS"
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2025 Citation: Priestley SL, D Ganguly, M Palma, K Messer. "The Winnie the Pooh Effect: Information Avoidance on PFAS Contamination in food."
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2025 Citation: Ganguly D, O M Savchenko, J Parker, K Messer. "Taking it for the Team: An Experimental Examination of Public Decision-Making when faced with an undesirable, but safe good."
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2024 Citation: Messer, K.D., P.J. Feldman, D. Ganguly, R. Iovanna, and J. Suhr Pierce. 2024. Behavioral Science Advisory Boards Could Strengthen USDAs Conservation Program Amid Unprecedented Spending and Loading Dock Challenges. Choices.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Nelson-Poteet, C., Xie, L., Messer, K.D., and L.H. Palm-Forster. 2024. Dare to Experiment: The Synergistic Relationship between Undergraduate Research and Experimental Economics. Applied Economics Teaching Resources.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2025 Citation: Ganguly D, P Ferraro, R Gordon, M Masters, K Messer. "Where best to invest the next dollar for conservation: a Test of Technical Assistance versus Financial Assistance "
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Ferraro, PJ, T Cherry, J Shogren, C Vossler, T Cason, H Byerly Flint, J Hochard, O Johansson-Stenman, P Martinsson, J Murphy, S Newbold, L Thunstrom, D van Soest, K van't Veld, A Dannenberg, G Loewenstein, L van Boven. 2023. Create a Culture of Experiments in Environmental Programs. Science 381(6659): 735-737.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., K.D. Messer, P. Shukla, and C. Weigel. 2024. Behavioral Biases among Producers: Experimental Evidence of Anchoring in Procurement Auctions. Review of Economics and Statistics.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: H�hler, J., J. Barreiro-Hurl�, M. Czajkowski, F.J. Dessart, P.J. Ferraro, T. Li, K.D. Messer, L. Palm-Forster, M. Termansen, F. Thomas, K. Zag�rska, K.H. Zemo, J. Rommel. 2024. Perspectives on Stakeholder Participation in the Design of Economic Experiments for Agricultural Policymaking: Pros, Cons, and Twelve Recommendations for Researchers. Applied Economics Policy & Perspective. 46(1): 338-359.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Paul, L.A., C. McGranaghan, A.R. Siders, P.K. Dineva, L.H. Palm-Forster, and K.D. Messer. 2024. Addressing Coordination Problems in Residential Buyouts: Experimental Evidence for Managed Retreat in the Face of Climate Change-Related Threats. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Shukla, P., K.D. Messer, P.J. Ferraro. 2023. Applying Behavioral Science to Agriculture, Food, and Agri-environmental Policymaking. Food Policy. 120: 102548.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Savchenko, O.M., L. H. Palm-Forster, L. Xie, R. Rahman, K.D. Messer. 2023. Encouraging Pro-environmental Behavior: Do Testimonials by Experts Work? PLOS ONE. 18 (10), e0291612.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Ellis, S.F., D. Ganguly, M. Kecinski, and K.D. Messer. 2023. Back to the Source: Consumers Response to Produce Irrigated with Different Sources of Recycled Water. Water Resources Research. 59 (7), e2022WR033031.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Wallander, S., L.A. Paul, P.J. Ferraro, K.D. Messer, and R. Iovanna. 2023. Behavioral Nudges in Conservation Auctions: A Field Experiment with U.S. Farmers. Food Policy. 120: 102504.
  • Type: Book Chapters Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2025 Citation: Kecinski, M. and K.D. Messer "Experimental Economics Approaches To Environmental Valuation." Book Chapter in the Handbook of Environmental Valuation edited by Tim Haab, Lala Ma, and John Whitehead
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2025 Citation: Lessons Learned from 10 Years of Embedding Experimentation in Agri-environmental Programs in the United States.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2025 Citation: Elinor Benami, Anne Bell1, Kent D. Messer, Wei Zhang, and Michael Cecil. "Seeding Change to Manage Climate Change: Growing Insights from Four USDA Programs to Support Climate-Smart Agriculture" Journal of Agricultural Economics.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2026 Citation: Sonia Refulio-Coronado1, Kent Messer, Caroline Noblet, and Emi Uchida, "Impact of personalized information on individual decisions to mitigate forever chemicals: Evidence from an online randomized evaluation."


Progress 07/15/22 to 07/14/23

Outputs
Target Audience:CBEAR connects researchers and stakeholders that can benefit from behavioral and experimental economics research, such as USDA program officials, government stakeholders, and leaders of non-profit organizations. We also engage with economics and behavioral science researchers in academia, government, and nonprofit organizations who seek to be connected in discussions about cutting-edge research that uses experimental and behavioral economics methods to address agricultural, environmental and risk management challenges. Once the research has been conducted, these findings areshared with stakeholders through academic articles, presentations at professional conferences, and the development and distribution of CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs. In particular, the CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs are designed to provide summaries in manners valuable to program administrators and implementers, as well as policymakers and other stakeholders, including USDA program managers, Extension Risk Management Education Centers, non-governmental organizations, the agricultural sector, and scholars with an ultimate goal of achieving greater impacts on the ground, increased landowner and customer satisfaction, and reduced program costs. Additionally, through frequent collaborations and trainings with USDA staff and researchers, CBEAR aims to foster a culture of experimentation within programs at USDA. This culture encourages the agri-environmental program managers to use simple experimental designs to test new ideas and to develop credible evidence supporting strategies that can improve performance, reduce costs, and increase returns on investments. By providing exemplars for empirical research designs, CBEAR also aims to facilitate NIFA's efforts to strengthen the quality and reliability of the empirical research it funds. Changes/Problems:The COVID crisis delayed our anticiapted spending. Therefore, we requestsed a No Cost Extension until July 2024. We were pleased that this request has been granted and look forward to another highly successful year. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?CBEAR successfully facilitated and participated in approximately 75 training and professional development initiatives within this reporting year. These included a range of presentations and workshops, both independently and in collaboration with associated entities, at various platforms such as the AAEA annual meetings, AERE annual meetings, NAREA Annual meetings REECAP conferences, the Chesapeake Bay Trust conference, and CBEAR's own seminar series. These activities were primarily designed to benefit agri-environmental economists and graduate students who have foundational knowledge in this field, but lack comprehensive formal training in applying behavioral and experimental economics or in risk management and agri-environmental policy formulation. The objective of these programs was to expose participants to the theories and empirical methods intrinsic to behavioral and experimental economics, and illustrate how these concepts and methodologies can be leveraged to assess and influence policies and programs. A number of these initiatives also incorporated forums where researchers had the opportunity to receive constructive feedback from more seasoned colleagues about their experimental design and execution. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?A multitude of research projects highlighted in this report yielded significant information that was shared with relevant stakeholder communities, including policymakers and program managers. This was not just achieved through the conventional means of publishing in peer-reviewed journals and presenting at academic conferences, but also through the dissemination of CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs and through the CBEAR website. The CBEAR's website, which was revamped in 2022 and acts as a central hub for information about ongoing projects and initiatives, as well as up-to-date contact information for CBEAR Fellows, program directors, staff, and postdoctoral researchers. The CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs, a series of concise articles, underline important insights or concepts from behavioral economics, present supporting or contradictory experimental evidence, and discuss their implications for USDA programs. Each Behavioral Insights Brief concludes with suggestions for experimental designs to aid USDA in testing innovations based on the brief's insights. Aside from topic-specific briefs, interesting publications are also highlighted. The website also features a link to CBEAR's YouTube channel, a repository for conference research talks and animated videos illustrating behavioral science phenomena. Over the past year, we continued to host the CBEAR Seminar Series. Each seminar spanned an hour, including a question and answer session moderated by Mark Masters. Promotion of the seminars was carried out through the CBEAR email list, other economics lists, and Twitter, leading to a highly positive response that exceeded our expectations. In total, over 500 attendees registered, with an average attendance of over 130 per seminar. A major new initiative in 2022 was the editing of a special issue of Food Policy, which focused on Applying Behavioral Since to Agriculture, Food, and Agri-Environmental Policy (see https://admin1.journals.elsevier.com/media/u0jbd4n2/food-policy-special-issue.pdf) . Kent Messer served as Managing Editor for this special issue. Paul Ferraro and Pallavi Shukla (CBEAR postdoc and Assistant Professor at Deakin University) served as co-editors. This special issue received a very high level of interest as more than 105 articles were submitted. The special issue is scheduled to be published in October 2023 and will include an introductory essay by Messer, Shukla and Ferraro. The next CBEAR Seminar Series will highlight articles that were accepted in this special issue. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the forthcoming reporting period, CBEAR plans to maintain its commitment to executing top-tier research in behavioral economics, utilizing innovative experimental platforms and designs. Our network of partners, both current and potential, will continue to be a source of valuable experience, enabling us to enhance the quantity and breadth of our experimental initiatives. Utilizing our experimental platform infrastructure, we will focus more on tracking the enduring effects of behavioral alterations stimulated by agri-environmental and risk management programs. It is critical to our mission that changes in producer behavior be sustainable over the long term. CBEAR will persist in aligning stakeholders to carry out research that can support USDA programs and will keep striving to expand the research base by sharing resources and financing groundbreaking studies. We are particularly excited about a new $650,000 grant from NIFA entitled "Beyond Adoption: Theory and Empirics to Predict and Understand the Sustained Use of Cover Crops by Agricultural Producers" (Ferraro, PI). We have recently been awarded a new $500,000 Cooperative Agreement with USDA Farm Service Agency to study how to improve the quality of land cover for land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. We're thrilled to have received a pledge from the Walton Family Foundation of $150,000 to extend this project and make connections to NRCS programs.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The Center for Behavioral and Experimental Agri-Environmental and Risk Management (CBEAR) has been and remains deeply involved in coordinating a network of researchers hailing from prominent research and land-grant universities. CBEAR's researchers apply behavioral economics to gain insights into the values and decision-making processes of farmers, ranchers, and landowners. Our work is focused on discovering new, applicable insights from behavioral economics that can be communicated and integrated into USDA programs as well programs that are administrated at the state or regional level or by non-governmental organizations. This direct integration of research and applications is driven primarily by CBEAR's execution of controlled field experiments on innovative experimental platforms, as well as through collaborations with USDA program managers and partners. The high-quality behavioral economic research we carried out, utilizing experimental platforms and innovative designs, has informed agri-environmental and risk management policies. Our research has achieved, and will continue to achieve two main goals: (1) they help reveal the behavioral mechanisms that underlie the design of agricultural programs and policies, including evaluating the fundamental rationality assumption of classical economic theory, and (2) they demonstrate how variations in program characteristics, whether major (e.g., offering additional technical assistance instead of addition financial incentives) or minor (e.g., defaults, incentive framing), can influence crucial program performance metrics. Throughout the period under report, CBEAR has been very productive. As indicated in the "Products" section of the report, since the last reporting period a year ago, we have managed to publish or have accepted 20 journal articles, including several in top journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Food Policy, Land Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Water Resources Research, Environmental and Resource Economics, Experimental Economics, and Applied Economics Policy & Perspective. We have given over 70 selected and invited presentations over the past year. These are in addition to the products reported in previous years. Additionally, we are in various stages of developing more than 15 journal articles. We were pleased to have been invited by the National Academies of Science to prepare a commission report on how behavioral economics can enhance environmental, conservation and climate change policy. Kent Messer wrote this report in conjunction with two CBEAR postdoctoral researchers (Diya Ganguly and Lusi Xie). This report received very good reviews and was published in 2023 (Messer, Ganguly, and Xie). As shown in the details on the various presentations that CBEAR has given, these research projects have provided essential information that was distributed to groups that can benefit from it, including policymakers and program managers. For example, in 2022, CBEAR recognized Field to Market with the CBEAR Award for Agri-Environmental Innovation, an annual award that acknowledges leaders who incorporate and champion the use of behavioral insights in program designs to enhance agri-environmental programs. Even amid the complications presented by the lingering COVID crisis, we managed to liaise with stakeholders and carry out research that can be beneficial. Meetings occurred between CBEAR leaders and members of the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD), National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA), and many others.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2023 Citation: "Ferraro, PJ, K Messer, P. Shukla, C. Weigel. Behavioral Biases among Producers: Experimental Evidence of Anchoring in Procurement Auctions. Review of Economics and Statistics"
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2023 Citation: Julia H�hler, Jes�s Barreiro-Hurl�, Miko?aj Czajkowski, Fran�ois J. Dessart, Paul J. Ferraro, Tongzhe Li, Kent D. Messer, Leah Palm-Forster, Mette Termansen, Fabian Thomas, Katarzyna Zag�rska, Kahsay Haile Zemo, Jens Rommel. Forthcoming. Pros and Cons of Stakeholder Participation Perspectives on Stakeholder Participation in the Design of Economic Experiments for Agricultural Policymaking: Pros, Cons, and Twelve Recommendations for Researchers. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: "Xie, L., W. Adamowicz, and P. Lloyd-Smith. 2023. Spatial and Temporal Responses to Incentives: An Application to Wildlife Disease Management Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 117, 102752"
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Xie, L., W. Adamowicz. Temporal Reliability of Contingent Behavior Trip Data in Kuhn-Tucker Recreation Demand Models Land Economics. 99 (2), 182-202
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Messer, K., Ganguly, D., and Xie, L. (2022). Applications of behavioral economics to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Commissioned paper prepared for the Committee on Future Directions for Applying Behavioral Economics to Policy, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Dineva, P., C. McGranaghan, K.D. Messer, L.H. Palm-Forster, L.A. Paul, and A.R. Siders. Forthcoming. Promoting Spatial Coordination in Flood Buyouts in the United States: Four Strategies and Four Challenges from the Economics of Land Preservation Literature. Natural Hazards Review.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Aminpour, Payam, J Helgeson, PJ Ferraro. The choice of message and messenger to drive behavior change that averts the health impacts of wildfires. BMC Public Health. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-14801-6
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, P.J., and J. L. Rehbeck. "Revealing a Preference for Mixtures: An Experimental Study of Risk" Quantitative Economics
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Paul, L.A., O. Savchenko, M. Kecinski, and K.D. Messer. 2022. Nudge or Sludge? An Experimental Game Illustrating How Misunderstood Scientific Information Can Change Consumer Behavior. Applied Economics Teaching Resources.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ferraro, PJ, P. Shukla. Is a Replicability Crisis on the Horizon for Agricultural Economics? Appled Economic Perspectives and Policy. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aepp.13323
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Meiselman, B.S., C. Weigel, P.J. Ferraro, M. Masters, K.D. Messer, O. Savchenko, and J.F. Suter. 2022. Lottery incentives and resource management: Evidence from the Agricultural Data Reporting Incentive Program (AgDRIP) Environmental and Resource Economics. 82 (4), 847-867. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-022-00690-1
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Xie, L., W. Adamowicz, M. Kecinski, and J. Fooks. 2022. "Using economic experiments to assess the validity of stated preference contingent behavior responses" Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 114:102659
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ferraro, PJ, JD Tracy. A Reassessment of the Potential for Loss-Framed Incentive Contracts to Increase Productivity: A meta-analysis and real-effort experiment. Experimental Economics
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Langer, M., K. Davidson, B. McFadden, K.D. Messer. 2022. Peer Feedback Can Decrease Consumers Willingness to Pay for Food: Evidence from a Field Experiment. Appetite. 178, 106162
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: C. Wardropper, L. Esman, S. Harden, P. Ranjan, Y. Masuda, P. Ranjan, C. Weigel, P. Ferraro, L. Prokopy, S.M.W Reddy. "Applying a fail-fast approach to conservation in US agriculture." Conservation Science and Practice.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Bass, D.A., B.R. McFadden, M. Costanigro, and K.D. Messer. Forthcoming. Implicit and Explicit Biases for Recycled Water and Tap Water. Water Resources Research.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Palm-Forster, L.H., M. Griesinger, J.M. Butler, J.R. Fooks, and K.D. Messer. 2022. Stewardship Signaling and Use of Social Pressure to Reduce Nonpoint Source Pollution. Land Economics.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ellis, S.F., M. Kecinski, K.D. Messer, and C. Lipchin. 2022. Consumer Perceptions After Long Term Use of Alternative Irrigation Water: A Field Experiment in Israel. Applied Economics Policy and Perspective. 44 (2), 1003-1020.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ellis, S.F., O. Savchenko, and K.D. Messer. 2022. "Mitigating Stigma Associated with Recycled Water: Aquifer Recharge and Trophic Levels." American Journal of Agricultural Economics. 104(3): 1077-1099.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: McFadden, B.R., P.J. Ferraro, and K.D. Messer. 2022. Private Costs of Carbon Emissions Abatement by Limiting Beef Consumption and Vehicle Use in the United States. PLOS ONE. 17(1): e0261372.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2023 Citation: Ganguly, D., S.Priestley, K. Messer, M. Palma. "Addressing Concerns of Emerging Pollutants: Consumer Willingness to Pay to Mitigate Exposure to Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)" Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. July 23-25, 2023
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2023 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Summer Conference, Portland, ME, May 31-June 2, 2023.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." Canadian Resource and Environmental Economics Association (CREEA) Annual Conference, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Sept.30 - Oct. 2, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Annual Conference, virtual, Feb.7-10, 2023.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island, Feb. 3, 2023.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." University of Delaware, Project WiCCED fall seminar, virtual, Oct. 5, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. The promise and pitfalls of applying insights from behavioral economics to address sustainability challenges.Symposium on Markets & Sustainability (SMS2022), jointly organized by U of Amsterdam, the U of Groningen, Vrije U Amsterdam, Wageningen U and Tinbergen Institute (keynote). Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 9 Sept 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", Universidad de Alicante
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, Jan. 25, 2023.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, Jan. 18, 2023.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, Jan. 10, 2023.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Masters, M. "Advancing Ag Conservation through a Social Science Lens." NFWF Chesapeake Agricultural Network Forum. January 24, 2023
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Dec. 9, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, Nov. 9, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", Texas A&M University
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", Florida State University
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", China Center for Behavioral Economics and Finance at Southwestern University for Finance and Economics
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", California State University Northridge
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", Federal Trade Commission
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", Workshop of Experimental and Behavioral Economics of the Americas
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. 2022. "A Field Experiment to Test the Relative Effectiveness of Technical Assistance vs Financial Assistance in Encouraging On-farm Conservation Practices." USDA-ERS Experimental and Behavioral Group, 6 June 2022 (virtual)
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", Informs Advances in Decisions Analaysis 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", ESA North America Meetings
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", Eastern Economic Meetings
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", Economic Science Association World Meetings 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", Experimental Economics Conference 2022 Universidad San Francisco de Quito
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", 2022 AAEA Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Feldman, PJ, PJ Ferraro. "A Certainty Effect for Preference Reversals Under Risk: Experiment and Theory", Workshop of Experimental and Behavioral Economics of the Americas
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. 2022. Invited Panelist "For the Sake of the Climate: Meditations on Retooling the Economy". Sawyer Seminar, 29 April 2022 (virtual)
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. 2022. "Measuring Program Success  Best Practices in Social Science Program Evaluation " Chesapeake Bay Trust's Behavior Change Forum. 10 February 2022 (virtual)
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Messer, K. 2022. The Right Water for the Right Purpose: Consumer Behavior, Stigma, and Social Acceptance of Water Reuse for Agriculture. South Dakota State University. Brookings, South Dakota, November 7. 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ganguly, D. , S. Banerjee, M. Bernedo, P.J Ferraro, K. Messer, C. Weigel. "Effects of Horizons, Delays, and Magnitudes on the Time Preferences of US Agricultural Producers and Land-grant University Students" INFORMS 2022, Indianapolis, IN, Oct 16-19 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Messer, K.D. P. Ferraro, C. Weigel. 2022. The Interaction of Behavioral Interventions in an Agri-environmental Procurement Auction: Anchoring and Stewardship Priming in a Natural Field Experiment. Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. Anaheim, California. August 2, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ganguly, D. , S. Banerjee, M. Bernedo, P.J Ferraro, K. Messer, C. Weigel. "Effects of Horizons, Delays, and Magnitudes on the Time Preferences of US Agricultural Producers and Land-grant University Students" Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA, July 31 - Aug. 2 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, H.Michael. "From economic experiment to program implementation: Using lab results to inform a new water buyback auction to protect endangered species in the Ichawaynochaway Creek of Georgia." Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA, July 31 - Aug. 2 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water to Protect Endangered Species in the Ichawaynochaway Creek of Georgia: Evidence from Field Experiments." GA-FIT Advisory Board Meeting, May 5, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. The Promise and Pitfalls of Applying Insights from Psychology and Neuroscience to Address Public Policy Challenges. The Eric J. Hanson Lecture, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. The Promise and Pitfalls of Applying Insights from Psychology and Neuroscience to Address Public Policy Challenges. The Promise and Pitfalls of Applying Insights from Psychology to Address Energy and Environmental Challenges. Keynote presentation at 10th Mannheim Conference on Energy and the Environment, Mannheim, Germany.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Xie, Messer, Palm-Forster, Masters, Michael. 2022 "Using Laboratory Experiments to Inform a Water Buyback Auction in the Ichawaynochaway Creek of Georgia." GA-FIT Advisory Board Meeting, Jan. 31, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ganguly, D., S. Banerjee, C. Gustafson. "Gender role in agricultural and economic decision making: An experimental and behavioral economic examination" Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA, July 31 - Aug. 2 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ferraro, P. J., Messer, K. D., Shukla, P. & Weigel, C. (2021). Behavioral Biases Among Producers: Experimental Evidence of Anchoring in Procurement Auctions. NBER Summer Institute 2022. July 25, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Messer, K.D. 2022. Behavioral modeling and adoption of climate-smart practices. Agricultural Modelling Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP). (Virtual) May 24, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ganguly, D, S. Banerjee, C. Gustafson. "Role of Gender Identity on Conservation Choice in an Agricultural Land Leasing Context". NAREA Annual Meeting, Mystic, CT, June 14, June 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Dineva, P. C. McGranaghan, A.R. Siders, L. Palm-Forster, K. Messer "Community Adaptation to Climate Risks: Employing a Think-Aloud Protocol to Understand Decision-Making in the Context of Home Buyouts." NAREA Conference, Mystic, CT, June 14, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Messer, K.D. 2022. Competitive Grant-Making: Stakeholders, Interdisciplinarity, and Bureaucracies". Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association. Mystic, Connecticut, June 13, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Messer, K. 2022. The Right Water for the Right Purpose: Consumer Behavior, Stigma and Social Acceptance of Water Reuse for Agriculture. UD Scholar in the Library. Newark, Delaware. May 11, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ferraro, P. J., Messer, K. D., Shukla, P. & Weigel, C. (2021). Behavioral Biases Among Producers: Experimental Evidence of Anchoring in Procurement Auctions. Eastern Economic Association Annual Meeting. 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L. Palm-Forster, M. Masters, H. Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water to Protect Endangered Species in the Ichawaynochaway Creek of Georgia: Evidence from Field Experiments." GA-FIT Advisory Board Meeting, May 5, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Messer, K. 2022. The Right Water for the Right Purpose: Developing the Evidence-Based for Social Acceptance of Water Reuse for Agriculture. Osher Institute for Lifelong Learning. Wilmington Delaware, May 2, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Messer, K.D. 2022. The Right Water for the Right Purpose: Developing the Evidence-Based for Social Acceptance of Water Reuse for Agriculture. 2022 Appalachian Experimental & Environmental Economics Workshop. Boone, North Carolina. April 9, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Hongli Feng. (Presenter) "Will Tests Lead to More Informed Antibiotics Use? An Application in Veterinarian Diagnostic and Treatment Decisions." CBEAR Seminar Series. March 21, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Messer, K. 2022. Evidence from Consumer Willingness-to-Pay Studies: New Approaches to Water Reuse. WateReuse Symposium. San Antonio Texas, March 8, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Paul, LA (Presenter), Christina McGranaghan, A.R. Siders, Polina Dineva, Leah Palm-Forster, Kent D. Messer. "Experimental Evidence on Agricultural Conservation Mechanisms and their Tradeoffs: Spatial Coordination of Property Buyouts in Flood-Prone Areas" University of Delaware APEC Seminar Series. March 2, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Jens Rommel (Presenter). "Farmers Risk Attitudes in Eleven European Farming Systems." CBEAR Seminar Series. March 7, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Leah Palm-Forster (Presenter). and K. Messer "Lessons and Recommendations for Conducting Research to Inform Agri-Environmental Initiatives" CBEAR Seminar Series. February 14, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Paul, LA., C. McGranaghan, A.R. Siders, L. Palm-Forster, K.D. Messer "Experimental Evidence on Agricultural Conservation Mechanisms and their Tradeoffs: Spatial Coordination of Property Buyouts in Flood-Prone Areas" Arkansas State University . February 11, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Messer, K.D. 2022. Building the Evidence Base on How Best to Encourage Water Quality Improvements by Households. Chesapeake Bay Trust Behavioral Change Forum. (Virtual) February 10, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Paul, LA (Presenter), Christina McGranaghan, A.R. Siders, Polina Dineva, Leah Palm-Forster, Kent D. Messer "Experimental Evidence on Agricultural Conservation Mechanisms and their Tradeoffs: Spatial Coordination of Property Buyouts in Flood-Prone Areas" University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. February 7, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Paul, LA (Presenter), Christina McGranaghan, A.R. Siders, Polina Dineva, Leah Palm-Forster, Kent D. Messer"Experimental Evidence on Agricultural Conservation Mechanisms and their Tradeoffs: Spatial Coordination of Property Buyouts in Flood-Prone Areas" USDA Economic Research Service. February 4, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Paul, LA (Presenter), Christina McGranaghan, A.R. Siders, Polina Dineva, Leah Palm-Forster, Kent D. Messer "Behavioral and Experimental Evidence for Agricultural and Environmental Policy" Towson University, Towson, MD. February 3, 2022
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: A. Hrozencik, J Suter, Ferraro, PJ, N. Hendricks. Social Comparisons and Groundwater Use: Evidence from Colorado and Kansas. American Journal of Agricultural Economics
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Xie, Messer, Palm-Forster, Masters, Michael. 2022 "From economic experiment to program implementation: Using lab results to inform a new water buyback auction to protect endangered species in the Ichawaynochaway Creek of Georgia." GA-FIT Advisory Board Meeting. January 31, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: David Pannell (Presenter). "Reducing agricultural water pollution: combining production economics and behavioral economics" CBEAR Seminar Series. January 31, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Paul, LA (Presenter), Christina McGranaghan, A.R. Siders, Polina Dineva, Leah Palm-Forster, Kent D. Messer "Experimental Evidence on Food and Agricultural Conservation Policy" RTI International, Durham, NC. January 28, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Dineva, P. C. McGranaghan, L. Paul, A.R. Siders, and K.D. Messer "Community Adaptation to Climate Risks: Understanding Decision-Making within Home Buyouts." CANR Symposium, Newark, DE, February 24, 2022.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Parsons, G., L. Paul, and K.D. Messer. 2022. Demand for an Environmental Public Good in the Time of COVID-19: A Statewide Water Quality Referendum. Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis. 13(1): 107-119.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Messer, K.D. and L.N. Taylor. The Economics of Ecosystem Service Markets: Application to Delaware. Advisory Board of Delaware Sea Grant, Dover, Delaware, November 18, 2022.
  • Type: Other Status: Submitted Year Published: 2021 Citation: "UD College of Agriculture and Natural Resource. 2021-2022. COVID Relief Funds for Graduate Education. $60,000. K.D. Messer (PI), P. Dineva and S. Gurung (grad students)."
  • Type: Other Status: Submitted Year Published: 2021 Citation: Robert Woodruff Foundation and USDA Office of Environmental Markets. 2021-2023. Using Experimental Economics to Inform Incentive Programs to Reduce Irrigation Water Use to Protect Engendered Species in the Ichawaynochaway Basin, Georgia. $1,200,000. M. Masters (PI), K.D. Messer (co-PI)
  • Type: Other Status: Submitted Year Published: 2023 Citation: USDA  Farm Service Agency. 2023-2026. Empowering Citizen Science via the Optimization of Financial Incentive Schemes and Technical Assistance to Improve Conservation Outcomes in the Conservation Reserve Program. $500,000. P. Feldman (PI), K.D. Messer, L. Xie (co-PIs).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: McGranaghan, C., L. Paul, L. Palm-Forster, A.R. Siders, and K..D. Messer. Spatial coordination of home buyouts in flood-prone areas: experimental evidence on economic mechanisms and their tradeoffs. Northeast Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, Annapolis, Maryland, June 2023.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Messer, K.D., D. Ganguly, M. Master, and P. Ferraro. Field experiment results on relative cost-effectiveness of Technical Assistance versus Financial Assistance with farmers in Georgia. Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. Washington, DC. July 2023.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Ganguly, D. ,S. Priestley, M. Palma, K.D. Messer. Addressing Concerns of Emerging Pollutants: Consumer Willingness to Pay to Mitigate Exposure to Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. Washington, DC. July 2023.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Annual Conference, New Zealand and virtual, Feb.7-10, 2023.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Xie, L., K. Messer, L.Palm-Forster, M.Masters, and H.Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, Jan. 10, 2023.
  • Type: Other Status: Submitted Year Published: 2021 Citation: USDA Economic Research Service. 2021-2023. The Persistence of Cover Cropping in the U.S. $175,000. K.D. Messer (PI), L. Paul, P. Ferraro (co-PIs).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Wallander, S., L. Paul, R. Iovanna, K.D. Messer, and P. Ferraro. Informational Nudges in Conservation Auctions: A Field Experiment with U.S. Farmers. USDA Economic Research Service. May 2023.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: "Xie, L., K. Messer, L. Palm-Forster, M. Masters, and H. Michael. "Buying Back Irrigation Water for Endangered Species Protection: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment and a High-stakes Field Experiment with Farmers." University of Alabama, January 2023."
  • Type: Other Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: USDA  Farm Service Agency. 2023-2026. Empowering Citizen Science via the Walton Family Foundation Optimization of Financial Incentive Schemes and Technical Assistance to Improve Conservation Outcomes in the Conservation Reserve Program. $150,000. P. Feldman (PI), K.D. Messer, L. Xie (co-PIs).
  • Type: Other Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: USDA NIFA - Beyond Adoption: Theory and Empirics to Predict and Understand the Sustained Use of Cover Crops by Agricultural Producers $650,000. Ferraro (PI).


Progress 07/15/21 to 07/14/22

Outputs
Target Audience:CBEAR connects researchers and stakeholders that can benefit from behavioral and experimental economics research, such as USDA program officials, government stakeholders, and leaders of non-profit organizations. We also engage with economics and behavioral science researchers in academia, government, and nonprofit organizations who seek to be connected in discussions about cutting-edge research that uses experimental and behavioral economics methods to address agricultural, environmental and risk management challenges. Once the research has been conducted, these findings areshared with stakeholders through academic articles, presentations at professional conferences, and the development and distribution of CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs. In particular, the CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs are designed to provide summaries in manners valuable to program administrators and implementers, as well as policymakers and other stakeholders, including USDA program managers, Extension Risk Management Education Centers, non-governmental organizations, the agricultural sector, and scholars with an ultimate goal of achieving greater impacts on the ground, increased landowner and customer satisfaction, and reduced program costs. Additionally, through frequent collaborations and trainings with USDA staff and researchers, CBEAR aims to foster a culture of experimentation within programs at USDA. This culture encourages the agri-environmental program managers to use simple experimental designs to test new ideas and to develop credible evidence supporting strategies that can improve performance, reduce costs, and increase returns on investments. By providing exemplars for empirical research designs, CBEAR also aims to facilitate NIFA's efforts to strengthen the quality and reliability of the empirical research it funds. Changes/Problems:In our 2021 program year, CBEAR faced limited access to research participants and in-person training and presentation delivery. However, we addressed these accessibility issues by navigating away from traditional delivery and research practices and adapting online user interface through virtualprogramming. CBEAR continued to go virtual with regards to our seminars and presentations. While also posting our seminar and workshop delivery on YouTube so that industry professionals could view them any time. We also continually update the CBEAR website so that workshop materials and behavioral briefs are available to access using social media to promote the availability and the benefit from our valuable information. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Despite the limitations of public gatherings and formal events, due to continuing challenge with COVID, CBEAR delivered over 52 training and professional development programs during this reporting year. In particular, CBEAR sponsored and co- sponsored with affiliates in the form of presentations and workshops (e.g. AAEA annual meetings, AERE annual meetings, CAMP Resources, REECAP conferences, AgMIP confernces, Chesapeake Bay Trust conference, Appalachian State University's Environment and Resource Economics Workshop, and equivalent regional associations. Each of these initiatives targeted agri-environmental economists along with graduate students who share a background in this area but limited formal training in the application of behavioral and experimental economics or risk management and agri-environmental policy design. CBEAR aimed these programs at introducing participants to theories and empirical designs from behavioral and experimental economics, and how these theories and designs can be used to inform and evaluate programs and policies. Some of these programs included forums through which researchers could receive feedback from more experienced colleagues on the design and implementation of experiments such as our CBEAR webinar. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Many of these research projects described in this report provide valuable information that was disseminated to the target communities of interest, such as policymakers and program managers. This was done not only through publication in peer- reviewed journals and academic conferences, but also through the development and publication of Behavioral Insight Briefs, which seek to highlight an important finding or concept from behavioral science (e.g., the power of defaults; loss aversion; framing of incentives); (2) the evidence in its favor (or against), particularly experimental evidence; and (3) the implications for USDA programs. Additionally, the findings of CBEAR research were incorporated into three training modules developed for USDA Food Production and Conservation (FPAC) in 2019. FPAC has been using these training modules in a variety of its training programs. Other ways that CBEAR disseminates its information is through a its website (centerbear.org), which provides a home for information about ongoing projects and initiatives, as well as current contact information for CBEAR fellows and program directors. The publication of behavioral insight briefs on the website is one way that CBEAR packages key understandings for current research for decision-makers. This series is comprised of short briefs that highlight (1) an important insight or concept from behavioral economics (e.g., the power of defaults; loss aversion; framing of incentives); (2) the evidence in its favor (or against), particularly experimental evidence; and (3) the implications for USDA programs. Each Behavioral Insights Brief concludes with ideas for experimental designs that can help USDA test innovations based on the insights from the brief. In addition to topic-specific briefs, we will also use the briefs to highlight particularly interesting publications. Also found on the website is a link to the CBEAR YouTube page, which acts as a collection of research talks at various conferences and animated videos breaking down behavioral science observations. In the past year, we continued our CBEAR Seminar Series. We solicited submissions for this Seminar Series and selected four submissions to present seminars: Dr. David Pannell of the University of Western Australia (January 31, 2022), Dr. Leah Palm-Forster of the University of Delaware (February 14, 2022), Dr. Hongli Feng of Iowa State University (March 21, 2022), Dr. Jens Rommel of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (March 21, 2022) and Dr. Kent Messer of the University of Delaware (April 4, 2022). Each seminar was an hour long in total, including a moderated question and answer time at the end managed by Mark Masters. We promoted the seminars through the CBEAR email list, and also through other economics lists and twitter. The overall response was tremendous and far exceeded our expectations. In total, 505 attendees registered, with 182, 138, 93, and 127 attendees at each seminar, respectively (average attendance of 135). In September 2021, CBEAR co-hosting a two-hour seminar by Paul Ferraro on the replicability crisis. USDA ERS Administrator Spiro Stefanou provided the introductory remarks. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next reporting period, CBEAR will continue to conduct high-quality behavioral economic research using experimental platforms and innovative designs. We anticipate that our research will be conducted using both in-person experiments and user interface programming due to the safety precautions regarding the continuing COVID. We will also continue to draw on the experience of our ever-growing network of existing and potential partners to expand the number and scope of experimental activities. CBEAR continues to use our experimental platform infrastructure and will keep placing greater emphasis on documenting the persistence of behavioral changes induced by agri-environmental and risk management programs. Ultimately, these programs cannot achieve their goals unless the changes in producers' behavior are long-lasting. Yet little behavioral research has focused on whether changes persist or on the types of programs most likely to induce lasting changes. CBEAR will continue to coordinate stakeholders to conduct research that can assist USDA programs and to expand the research base by sharing resources and funding innovative research. A recently awarded Human- Environment and Geographical Sciences (HEGS) Program grant ($385,248) utilizes the expertise of CBEAR to explore this concept of persistence with Dr. Jing Gao, of the University of Delaware. Additional collaboration with the Economic Research Service through a new Cooperative Agreement ($175,000) also seeks to strengthen the understanding of persistence of behavioral changes within the agriculture field. We also recently received notification from the Walton Family Foundation that they are prepared to give CBEAR $600,000 in matching to support its recent efforts to test the power of simplying the application process for conservation programs. CBEAR will also carry on with the dissemination of research insights, which may look different moving forward due to the challenges of COVID-19. To continue to communicate the current research, CBEAR will again be offering its highly successful virtual Seminar Series. Finally, we look forward to sharing the insights gained through the work of CBEAR with an expanding audience, as we have been asked by the National Academies of Science to write a report on the use of behavioral economics to improve environmental and climate change policy. This should be a fantastic opportunity to highlight CBEAR's work and to expand its reach both domestically and internationally.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The Center for Behavioral and Experimental Agri-Environmental and Risk Management (CBEAR) Research has and continues to coordinate a consortium of researchers from major research and land-grant universities that apply the science of behavioral economics to understand the values and decision-making process of farmers, ranchers, and landowners. CBEAR has worked to gain new information from behavioral economics that can be rapidly incorporated into USDA programs. This tight coupling of research and applications comes from CBEAR's use of controlled field experiments in novel experimental platforms and in field collaborations with USDA program managers and their partners. During this reporting period, much was accomplished. We conducted high-quality behavioral economic research using experimental platforms and innovative designs that was able to inform agri-environmental and risk management policies. Specifically, our experiments have and will continue to: (1) elucidate the assumed behavioral mechanisms on which agricultural programs and policies are designed, including assessing the core rationality assumption of traditional economic theory, and (2) illustrate how changes in program attributes both large (e.g., offering technical assistance rather than financial incentives) and small (e.g., defaults, framing of incentives) affect important metrics of program performance. As shown in the section labeled "Products" in the previous section, during the past year we have published or had accepted 11 journal articles and given 30 selected and invited presentations. Additionally, we have over 25 journal articles in various stages of development. Through several of these now-published papers started prior to receiving USDA-NIFA funding, they were actually initiated when CBEAR was receiving funding from the USDA Economic Research Service and were finalized with effort supported by UDA-NIFA. Additionally, many of these research projects provide valuable information was gained that needed to be disseminated to the groups that benefit from the information, including policymakers and program managers. This was done not only through publication in peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences, but also through the development and publication of Behavioral Insight Briefs, which seek to highlight an important finding or concept from behavioral science (e.g., the power of defaults; loss aversion; framing of incentives); (2) the evidence in its favor (or against), particularly experimental evidence; and (3) the implications for USDA programs. Additionally, the findings of CBEAR research were incorporated into three training modules developed for USDA Food Production and Conservation (FPAC) in 2019. FPAC is using these training modules in a variety of training programs. Despite challenges raised by the coronavirus, we were able to coordinate with stakeholders to engage in research that can be of assistance. Meetings took place between CBEAR leaders and members of the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD), National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), and Field to Market. In 2020, CBEAR awarded Dr. Marca Weinberg the CBEAR Award for Agri-Environmental Innovation, an annual prize to recognize leaders who incorporate and celebrate the use of behavioral insights in program designs to improve agri-environmental programs.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Paul, LP, J. Gao, P. Ferraro, and K. Messer. ⿿The Persistence of Conservation Cover Cropping.⿝ Paper presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting, Austin, TX
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: "Li, Tongzhe, L Paul, K Messer, H Kaiser. ""The Impact of Expiration Dates Labels on Hedonic Markets for Perishable Products."" EAAE 2021 Congress C.P. 1.01: Economic Analysis of Food Quality"
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ellis, S.F., O. Savchenko, and K. Messer. ⿿Testing the Waters in a Pandemic: Challenges and Insights from Online Recruitment of Representative Samples for Economic Field Experiments.⿝ Paper presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting, Austin, TX
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Laura Paul. Politicization of [Covid-19] Risky Behaviors: Are Americans Inconsistent when Taking Politicized Risks? presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Laura Paul. The effects of defaults and anchoring in the Conservation Reserve Program enrollment process: results from a framed field experiment. presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Pallavi Shukla. Behavioral Biases Among Producers: Experiment Evidence of Anchoring in Auctions. presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Paul Feldman. Eliciting farmer discount rates and the implications of heterogeneous discount rates for agri-environmental program design and evaluations. presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Paul Ferraro. Experimental Economics Section Track Session, "Field experiments in Agriculture and the Environment" Session moderator at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Palm-Forster, L. 2021. "AgE MINDSPACE: Overview and Takeaways for the Bay," NFWF All-Bay Networking Forum, 2/10/2021
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Messer, K.D. "Conservation Auctions: Insights and Challenges from the Lab and Field". Special Session: Auctions for Natural Resource Management & Conservation. Austalasian Agricultural & Resource Economics Society, Sydney, Australia, February 9, 2021
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ellis, S.F., O.M. Savchenko, K.D. Messer. "Testing the Waters: Challenges and Lessons Learned from Online Recruitment of Representative Samples for Economic Experiments." AAEA, Austin, TX, August 1-3, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Alpízar, F, M Bernedo, PJ Ferraro, and BS Meiselman. Exposure-enhanced goods and technology disadoption: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial with resource-conserving technologies. Wageningen University & Tilburg University (virtual)
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, K.D. ⿿Evidence-Based Blueprints for Behavioral Change to Improve Coastal Water Quality.⿝ Chesapeake Bay Trust. October 27, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, K.D. ⿿What New Insights from the Behavioral Sciences Might Make Our Projects More Effective?⿝ Field to Market Cross-Sector Dialogue -- The Human Element: What Social Science Can Teach Us About Building Effective Sustainability Strategies for U.S. Agriculture, December 8, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, K.D. and L.H. Palm-Forster. ⿿Experimental & Behavioral Economics to Inform Agri-Environmental Programs & Policies.⿝ AAEA Workshop ⿿ Oxford Handbook on Agricultural Economics. October 26, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, K.D. ⿿Evidence-Based Blueprints for Behavioral Change to Improve Coastal Water Quality.⿝ Project WiCCED Seminar Series. September 30, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, K.D. "Testing the Effectiveness of Applying Nudges to Encourage Conservation Behavior: Lessons from Large-scale Experiments with USDA⿝ North American Congress for Conservation Biology, Denver, CO, July 28, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ahsanuzzaman, L. Palm-Forster, J.F. Suter "Communications in the presence of environmental uncertainty in the commons" at the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) annual meeting, Kansas City, KS July 26-28
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ellis, S.F., T. DeLiberty, and K. Messer. "Cover Crop Persistence Amongst Delaware Farmers: A GIS Investigation." Paper presented at Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting, Kansas City, MO, July 26-28, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: "Felman, P, PJ Ferraro, C Weigel. ""A Closer Look at Discount Rates: Using Individual-Level Estimates to Evaluate Measures of Time Preferences""
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Felman, P, and PJ Ferraro "Changing Farmers Risk Attitudes"
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Felman, P, PJ Ferraro, C Weigel. "Measuring the Time Preferences of Experienced Producers"
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Paul Ferraro. Advancing the Science of Adaptation, London School of Economics, 14 October 2020
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P. Exposure enhanced goods and technology disadoption: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial with resource-conserving technologies. Joint seminar of Tilburg University and Wageningen University, Virtual
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P. The persistence of peer comparison effects on polluters. 2020 Annual Meeting of Association for Public Policy and Management, Virtual
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P. Persistence of the Effects of Behavioral Science-inspired Interventions. An expert panel at the 2020 Annual Meeting of Association for Public Policy and Management, Virtual
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Weigel, Collin, Laura A. Paul, Paul J. Ferraro, and Kent D. Messer. "Challenges in recruiting US farmers for policy-relevant economic field experiments." Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 43, no. 2 (2021): 556-572.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: McFadden, B, PJ Ferraro, K Messer. Private costs of mitigating carbon emissions by limiting beef consumption and vehicle use. PLoS One. 17(1)
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Balmford et al. Making more effective use of human behavioural science in conservation interventions. Biological Conservation. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109256
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Weigel, C, S Harden, Y Matsuda, PJ Ferraro, L Prokopy, S Reddy. "Using a Randomized Controlled Trial to Develop Conservation Strategies on Rented Farmlands" Conservation Letters
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Li, T, J Fooks, K Messer, and PJ Ferraro. 2019. A Field Experiment to Estimate the Effects of Anchoring and Framing on Residents⿿ Willingness to Purchase Water Runoff Management Technologies. Resource and Energy Economics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2019.07.001
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ellis, S.F., O. Savchenko, and K.D. Messer. 2021. "Mitigating Stigma Associated with Recycled Water: Aquifer Recharge and Trophic Levels." American Journal of Agricultural Economics.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Rosch S., S.R. Skorbiansky, C. Weigel, K.D. Messer, D. Hellerstein. ⿿Using Economic Experiments to Promote Evidence-Based Policy-Making for Farmer and Rural Populations.⿝ Applied Economics Policy & Perspectives.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Savchenko, O.M., T. Li, M. Kecinski, and K.D. Messer. Forthcoming. ⿿Does Food Processing Mitigate Consumers⿿ Concerns about Crops Grown with Recycled Water?⿝ Food Policy.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ahsanuzzaman, L. Palm-Forster, J.F. Suter "Communications in the presence of environmental uncertainty in the commons" at the Behavioral and Experimental Economists of Mid-Atlantic Area (BEEMA5) conference, Villanova University, PA, October 4-5, 2019
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Li, T., Ahsanuzzaman, K.D. Messer "Is there a potential market for seaweed? A framed field experiment on consumer acceptance of a novel product" Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association Annual Meeting, Portsmouth, NH, June 9-12, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ellis, S.F. "Essays on the Economics of Stigma and Disgust: Behavioral Evidence from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Field Experiments." Presented at the CONSERVE Scholars September Meeting, College Park, MD, September, 19, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ellis, S.F., M. Kecinski, K.D. Messer, and J.L. Lusk. "A Neuroeconomic Investigation of Disgust in Food Purchasing Decisions." Paper presented at the Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association Annual Meeting, Portsmouth, NH, June 9-12, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Feldman, PJ, and PJ Ferraro "Changing Farmers Risk Attitudes", Universidad San Francisco de Quito
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Feldman, P, PJ Ferraro, C Weigel. "Measuring the Time Preferences of Experienced Producers", ESA Around the World
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, P. Insights from Working with Agencies. Panel Presentation at Symposium ⿿Evidence-Based Policy: From Rhetoric to Reality", Technology Institute, Washington, DC
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P. Plenary Talk. "Behavioral Economics to Improve Environmental Programs Knowns and unknowns" at Workshop "Nudging for nature: Mapping the opportunities for improving conservation by better incorporating human behaviour", Cambridge University, UK
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, P. Food Systems Problems are Human Behavior Problems. 2019 Food Systems Symposium. Baltimore, MD
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. Plenary Talk. "Improving program effectiveness by creating a culture of experimental evaluation" at the Annual Meeting of the Research Network on Economic Experiments for the Common Agricultural Policy (REECAP, September 9th and 10th at the University of Osnabrück, Germany.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. Introduction to Workshop on Best Practices for Addressing the Replicability Crisis in Agricultural and Applied Economics. 20 July. AAEA Annual Meetings
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. Curb Your Enthusiasm: Overview of Best Practices in Empirical Research Design. Workshop on Best Practices for Addressing the Replicability Crisis in Agricultural and Applied Economics. AAEA Annual Meetings. July 2019
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. Plenary Talk. "Behavioral Economics to Improve Environmental Programs Knowns and unknowns" at the INRA Workshop "Environmental and Natural Resource Conservation", 16-17 September 2019, Montpellier.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Li, T., K.D. Messer, and H.M. Kaiser. Forthcoming. ⿿The Impact of Expiration Dates on Hedonic Markets for Perishable Products.⿝ Food Policy.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Li T, Ahsanuzzaman, and K Messer. "Is there a potential market for seaweed? A frame field experiment on consumer acceptance of a novel product" Marine Resource Economics
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. Persistence. Keynote presentation at the Behavioral Science and Policy Association annual meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, PJ, P Shukla. Is a Replicability Crisis on the Horizon for Environmental and Resource Economics? (Virtual), AERE Summer Conference
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, PJ. Panel Presentation on knowns and unknowns in applying behavioral economics to conservation problems.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, PJ, P Shukla. Is a Replicability Crisis on the Horizon for Environmental and Resource Economics? (Virtual), Dept of Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 8 July 2020
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Messer, K.D., S. Ellis, M. Kecinski, T. Li, and O. Savchenko. 2019. "When WTP shows that consumers dont want "environmentally-friendly" food: informing the use of recycled irrigation water." Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, July 22, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Messer, K.D. 2019. "The Generalizability of Student Experiments for Use in Agri-Environmental Policy-Making." Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, July 22, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Messer, K.D. 2019. "How to Network: Early Career Mentoring Workshop" Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, July 24, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, P., C. Weigel, J. Fan, K. Messer. "Nudging Organizations: Evidence from three large-scale field experiments" Advances with Field Experiments Workshop. Chicago, IL. September 13, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Weigel C, S Harden, Y Matsuda, PJ Ferraro, L Prokopy, S Reddy. "Adoption of Conservation Practices on Rented Farmlands" Heartland Environmental and Resource Economics Workshop at Illinois. Urbana-Champaign, IL. September 28, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Messer, K.D., "Presentation of the 2019 CBEAR Prize of Innovation to the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking." Brookings Institute, Washington, DC. Wilmington, Delaware, December 3, 2019
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Messer. K.D. "Implementing the Science of Strategic Conservation for the Agland and Open Space Protection in New Castle County." Wilmington, Delaware, December 5, 2019
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Allen, W and K.D. Messer. "Implementing the Science of Strategic Conservation for the Delmarva Conservation and Resoration Network." Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Maryland, October 9, 2019
  • Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: CBEAR. Retrieved from www.centerbear.org.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Test and Adapt: speeding up climate change adaptation is a tall order. Ferraro, PJ. 2019. Behind the Paper Blog, Behavioural and Social Sciences at Nature Research, July (socialsciences.nature.com)
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Webinar. Copresented by Ben Meiselman and Michelle Armiger (Maryland Department of the Environment). Title: "Compliance with Regulatory Intermediaries: Evidence from Lead Contractors in Maryland." In series: Evidence Based Compliance Assurance Webinar Series. Series sponsors: EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance and the Environmental Program Innovations Collaborative. https://epic-evidence.org/webinars
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ferraro, PJ, J Fooks, R Iovanna, J Larson, B Meiselman, K Messer, and M Wilson. Conservation outreach that acknowledges human contributions to climate change does not inhibit action by U.S. farmers: Evidence from a large randomized controlled trial embedded in a federal program on soil health. PLoS One
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Byerly, H, P.J. Ferraro, T. Li, K.D. Messer, and C. Weigel. 2021. ⿿A Story Induces Greater Environmental Contributions Than Scientific Information Among Liberals But Not Conservatives.⿝ One Earth. 4(4): 545-552.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Nielsen, K.S., Marteau, T.M., Bauer, J.M. et al. Biodiversity conservation as a promising frontier for behavioral science. Nat Hum Behav 5, 550⿿556 (2021).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Wu, S, L.H. Palm-Forster, and K.D. Messer. 2021. ⿿Impact of Peer Comparisons and Firm Heterogeneity on Nonpoint Source Water Pollution: An Experimental Study.⿝ Resource and Energy Economics. 63: 10142.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Weigel C, S Harden, Y Matsuda,PJ Ferraro, L Prokopy, S Reddy. "Adoption of Conservation Practices on Rented Farmlands" Conservation Letters
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: Duke, J.M., Z. Liu, J.F. Suter, K.D. Messer, and H.A. Michael. Forthcoming. ⿿Some Taxes Are Better Than Others: An Economic Experiment Analyzing Groundwater Management in a Spatially Explicit Aquifer.⿝ Water Resources Research.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: Gharib M.H., L.H. Palm-Forster, T.J. Lybbert, and K.D. Messer. Forthcoming. ⿿Fear of Fraud and Willingness to Pay for Hybrid Maize Seed in Kenya.⿝ Food Policy
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Yuta J. Masuda, Seth C. Harden, Pranay Ranjan, Chloe B. Wardropper, Collin Weigel, Paul J. Ferraro*, Sheila M.W. Reddy*, Linda S. Prokopy* Rented Farmland: A Missing Piece of the Nutrient Management Puzzle in the Upper Mississippi River Basin? Journal of Soil and Water Conservation
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, PJ, P. Shukla. Is there a Replicability Crisis on the Horizon for Environmental and Resource Economics?
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ellis, S.F., M. Kecinski, K.D. Messer, and C. Lipchin. "Consumer "Perceptions After Long Term Use of Alternative Irrigation Water: A Field Experiment in Israel"; Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy."
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ellis S.F., M Masters, K.D. Messer, C. Weigel, and P.J. Ferraro. "The Problem of Feral Hogs and the Challenges of Providing a Weak-link Public Good." Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Reddy, Wardropper, Weigel, Masuda, Harden, Ranjan, Getson, Esman, Ferraro, Prokopy. "Effects of commonly-used message frames on conservation behavior" Conservation Letters.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Rosch S., S.R. Skorbiansky, C. Weigel, K.D. Messer, and D. Hellerstein. 2021. ⿿Barriers to Using Economic Experiments in Evidence-Based Agricultural Policymaking.⿝ Applied Economics Policy and Perspectives. 43(2): 531-555.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Li, T. K.D. Messer, A. Mamadzhanov, and J. McCluskey. 2020. ⿿Preferences for Local Food: Tourists versus Local Residents.⿝ Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics. 68(4): 429-444.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, E.R., K. Advani, B.R. McFadden, T. Malone. 2020. "How Will COVID-19 Affect Halloween?" Choices
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: McFadden B.R., T. Malone, M. Kecinski, and K.D. Messer. Forthcoming. ⿿COVID 19 Induced Stigma in U.S. Consumers: Evidence and Implications.⿝ American Journal of Agricultural Economics.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Kecinski M., K.D. Messer, B.R. McFadden, and T. Malone. 2020. ⿿Environmental and Regulatory Concerns during the COVID 19 Pandemic: Results from the Pandemic Food and Stigma Survey⿝ Environmental and Resource Economics. 74(4): 1139-1148.
  • Type: Book Chapters Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Palm-Forster, L. and K.D. Messer. "Experimental and Behavioral Economics to Inform Agri-Environmental Programs and Policies." Chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Agricultural Economics. Editors. D. Just and C. Barrett. Oxford University Press. 2021
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Messer, K.D. ⿿Every Drop Counts: Advancing Agricultural Water Reuse Through Transdisciplinary Approaches.⿝ World Microbe Forum. June 22, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Messer, K.D. ⿿Every Drop Counts: Agricultural Water Reuse Advances from the CONSERVE Center.⿝ Food Systems Friday. May 21, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Messer, K.D. "Grantsmanship in Agricultural, Resource, and Environmental Economics." Grants Panel for NAREA Scholars Circle. Northeast Agricultural and Resource Economics Association. April 19, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Alpízar, F, M Bernedo, PJ Ferraro. Input efficiency as a solution to externalities: a randomized controlled trial. The Triangle Resource and Environmental Economics (TREE) Seminar, a collaboration of Duke University, North Carolina State University, and RTI International. (virtual)
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Alpízar, F, M Bernedo, PJ Ferraro, and BS Meiselman. Exposure-enhanced goods and technology disadoption: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial with resource-conserving technologies. Georgia State University (virtual)


Progress 07/15/20 to 07/14/21

Outputs
Target Audience:CBEAR connects researchers and stakeholders that can benefit from behavioral and experimental economics research, such as USDA program officials, government stakeholders, and leaders of non-profit organizations. We also engage with economics and behavioral science researchers in academia, government, and nonprofit organizations who seek to be connected in discussions about cutting-edge research that uses experimental and behavioral economics methods to address agricultural, environmental and risk management challenges. Once the research has been conducted, these findings areshared with stakeholders through academic articles, presentations at professional conferences, and the development and distribution of CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs. In particular, the CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs are designed to provide summaries in manners valuable to program administrators and implementers, as well as policymakers and other stakeholders, including USDA program managers, Extension Risk Management Education Centers, non-governmental organizations, the agricultural sector, and scholars with an ultimate goal of achieving greater impacts on the ground, increased landowner and customer satisfaction, and reduced program costs. Additionally, through frequent collaborations and trainings with USDA staff and researchers, CBEAR aims to foster a culture of experimentation within programs at USDA. This culture encourages the agri-environmental program managers to use simple experimental designs to test new ideas and to develop credible evidence supporting strategies that can improve performance, reduce costs, and increase returns on investments. By providing exemplars for empirical research designs, CBEAR also aims to facilitate NIFA's efforts to strengthen the quality and reliability of the empirical research it funds. Changes/Problems:In-person research across the country was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic that impacted the United States starting in the Spring of 2020. Our in-person research has been stopped since that time. However, many of our research projects continued as moved some research studies on-line and were able to develop new studies that could be conducted on-line, including our rapid survey on the impacts of COVID19, which has already yield four publications including in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Environmental and Resources Economics, and Choices. It also generated data for several other papers that are in development. The biggest change was the postponement of the 2020 Conference on Behavioral and Agri-Environmental Research that was scheduled for November 13th and 14th at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. A new date is planned to be announced at a point when the virus does not pose a threat. We have developed a CBEAR seminar series that began virtually in the Fall of 2020 in its place, that builds upon the strength of the CBEAR Fellows network. In its inaugural seminar, we had the opportunity to award Dr. Marca Weinberg with the 2020 CBEAR Prize for Agri-Environmental Innovation. As mentioned earlier, the overall response was tremendous and far exceeded our expectations. In total, 505 attendees registered, with 182, 138, 93, and 127 attendees at each seminar, respectively (average attendance of 135). What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Training and professional development opportunities were planned for this reporting year. We worked with CBEAR affiliates to organize educational symposia held in conjunction with relevant conferences and workshops (e.g., AAEA annual meetings; AERE annual meetings; CAMP Resources, Appalachian State University's Environment and Resource Economics Workshop, and equivalent regional associations). Unfortunately, several of these were cancelled or delayed due to COVID-19. These symposia were designed to target agricultural and environmental economists and graduate students who have interests, but limited formal training, in the application of behavioral and experimental economics to risk management and agri-environmental policy design. These symposia were aimed at introducing participants to theories and empirical designs from behavioral and experimental economics, and how such theories and designs can be used to inform and evaluate programs and policies. Some of these symposia were to include forums through which researchers can receive feedback from more experienced colleagues on the design and implementation of experiments. In addition, we identified opportunities to organize educational symposia attached to non-academic meetings or discipline-specific meetings, such as the annual ERME National Conference in 2019. These symposia offer opportunities to identify new collaborations with practitioners and ensure our ongoing research is relevant to today's program challenges.As shown in the "Products" section, we did participate in a number of these activities in 2019 and early 2020. However, with the onset of COVID-19, several of these projects had to be moved to virtual trainings or delayed. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Many of these research projects described in this report provide valuable information that was disseminated to the target communities of interest, such as policymakers and program managers. This was done not only through publication in peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences, but also through the development and publication of Behavioral Insight Briefs, which seek to highlight an important finding or concept from behavioral science (e.g., the power of defaults; loss aversion; framing of incentives); (2) the evidence in its favor (or against), particularly experimental evidence; and (3) the implications for USDA programs. Additionally, the findings of CBEAR research were incorporated into three training modules developed for USDA Food Production and Conservation (FPAC) in 2019. FPAC is using these training modules in a variety of training programs. Other ways that CBEAR disseminates its information is through a its website (centerbear.org), which provides a home for information about ongoing projects and initiatives, as well as current contact information for CBEAR fellows and program directors. The publication of behavioral insight briefs on the website is one way that CBEAR packages key understandings for current research for decision-makers. This series is comprised of short briefs that highlight (1) an important insight or concept from behavioral economics (e.g., the power of defaults; loss aversion; framing of incentives); (2) the evidence in its favor (or against), particularly experimental evidence; and (3) the implications for USDA programs. Each Behavioral Insights Brief concludes with ideas for experimental designs that can help USDA test innovations based on the insights from the brief. In addition to topic-specific briefs, we will also use the briefs to highlight particularly interesting publications. Also found on the website is a link to the CBEAR YouTube page, which acts as a collection of research talks at various conferences and animated videos breaking down behavioral science observations. In the past year, we launched a new CBEAR virtual Seminar Series. We solicited submissions from our 29 CBEAR Fellow works and selected four submissions to present seminars: Dr. Sheila Reddy of the Nature Conservancy (January 11), Dr. James Cox of Georgia State University (February 1), Dr. Tongzhe Li of Guelph University (February 15), and Dr. Kelly Davidson of the University of Delaware (March 8). The inaugural seminar was also the venue for us to present the 2020 CBEAR Price for Dr. Marca Weinberg. Each seminar was an hour long in total, including a moderated question and answer time at the end managed by Mark Masters. We promoted the seminars through the CBEAR email list, and also through other economics lists and twitter. The overall response was tremendous and far exceeded our expectations. In total, 505 attendees registered, with 182, 138, 93, and 127 attendees at each seminar, respectively (average attendance of 135). This September, we are co-hosting a two-hour seminar by Paul Ferraro on the replicability crisis. USDA ERS Administrator Spiro Stefanou will provide a brief introductory statement. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next reporting period, CBEAR is going to continue conducting high-quality behavioral economic research using experimental platforms and innovative designs. Note that we had anticipated that some of research would be conducted using in-person experiments and that is now being modified and/or delay due to the safety precautions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. We will also continue to draw on the experience of our ever-growing network of existing and potential partners to expand the number and scope of experimental activities. CBEAR continues to use our experimental platform infrastructure and will keep placing greater emphasis on documenting the persistence of behavioral changes induced by agri-environmental and risk management programs. Ultimately, these programs cannot achieve their goals unless the changes in producers' behavior are long-lasting. Yet little behavioral research has focused on whether changes persist or on the types of programs most likely to induce lasting changes. CBEAR will continue to coordinate stakeholders to conduct research that can assist USDA programs and to expand the research base by sharing resources and funding innovative research. A recently awarded Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences (HEGS) Program grant ($385,248) utilizes the expertise of CBEAR to explore this concept of persistence with Dr. Jing Gao, of the University of Delaware. Additional collaboration with the Economic Research Service through a new Cooperative Agreement ($75,000) also seeks to strengthen the understanding of persistence of behavioral changes within the agriculture field. CBEAR will also carry on with the dissemination of research insights, which may look different moving forward due to the challenges of COVID-19. To continue to communicate the current research, CBEAR will again be offering its highly successful virtual Seminar Series.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The Center for Behavioral and Experimental Agri-Environmental and Risk Management (CBEAR) Research has and continues to coordinate a consortium of researchers from major research and land-grant universities that apply the science of behavioral economics to understand the values and decision-making process of farmers, ranchers, and landowners. CBEAR has worked to gain new information from behavioral economics that can be rapidly incorporated into USDA programs. This tight coupling of research and applications comes from CBEAR's use of controlled field experiments in novel experimental platforms and in field collaborations with USDA program managers and their partners. During this reporting period, much was accomplished. We conducted high-quality behavioral economic research using experimental platforms and innovative designs that was able to inform agri-environmental and risk management policies. Specifically, our experiments have and will continue to: (1) elucidate the assumed behavioral mechanisms on which agricultural programs and policies are designed, including assessing the core rationality assumption of traditional economic theory, and (2) illustrate how changes in program attributes both large (e.g., offering technical assistance rather than financial incentives) and small (e.g., defaults, framing of incentives) affect important metrics of program performance. As shown in the section labeled "Products" in the previous section, during the past year we have published or had accepted 11 journal articles and given 30 selected and invited presentations. Additionally, we have over 25 journal articles in various stages of development. Through several of these now-published papers started prior to receiving USDA-NIFA funding, they were actually initiated when CBEAR was receiving funding from the USDA Economic Research Service and were finalized with effort supported by UDA-NIFA. Additionally, many of these research projects provide valuable information was gained that needed to be disseminated to the groups that benefit from the information, including policymakers and program managers. This was done not only through publication in peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences, but also through the development and publication of Behavioral Insight Briefs, which seek to highlight an important finding or concept from behavioral science (e.g., the power of defaults; loss aversion; framing of incentives); (2) the evidence in its favor (or against), particularly experimental evidence; and (3) the implications for USDA programs. Additionally, the findings of CBEAR research were incorporated into three training modules developed for USDA Food Production and Conservation (FPAC) in 2019. FPAC is using these training modules in a variety of training programs. Despite challenges raised by the coronavirus, we were able to coordinate with stakeholders to engage in research that can be of assistance. Meetings took place between CBEAR leaders and members of the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD), National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), and Field to Market. In 2020, CBEAR awarded Dr. Marca Weinberg the CBEAR Award for Agri-Environmental Innovation, an annual prize to recognize leaders who incorporate and celebrate the use of behavioral insights in program designs to improve agri-environmental programs.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, K.D. Testing the Effectiveness of Applying Nudges to Encourage Conservation Behavior: Lessons from Large-scale Experiments with USDA North American Congress for Conservation Biology, Denver, CO, July 28, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ahsanuzzaman, L. Palm-Forster, J.F. Suter "Communications in the presence of environmental uncertainty in the commons" at the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) annual meeting, Kansas City, KS July 26-28
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ellis, S.F., T. DeLiberty, and K. Messer. "Cover Crop Persistence Amongst Delaware Farmers: A GIS Investigation." Paper presented at Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting, Kansas City, MO, July 26-28, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: "Felman, P, PJ Ferraro, C Weigel. ""A Closer Look at Discount Rates: Using Individual-Level Estimates to Evaluate Measures of Time Preferences"""
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Felman, P, and PJ Ferraro "Changing Farmers' Risk Attitudes"
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Felman, P, PJ Ferraro, C Weigel. "Measuring the Time Preferences of Experienced Producers"
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Paul Ferraro. Advancing the Science of Adapation, London School of Economics, 14 October 2020
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P. Exposure enhanced goods and technology disadoption: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial with resource-conserving technologies. Joint seminar of Tilburg University and Wageningen University, Virtual
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P. The persistence of peer comparison effects on polluters. 2020 Annual Meeting of Association for Public Policy and Management, Virtual
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P. Persistence of the Effects of Behavioral Science-inspired Interventions. An expert panel at the 2020 Annual Meeting of Association for Public Policy and Management, Virtual
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ferraro, PJ, J Fooks, R Iovanna, J Larson, B Meiselman, K Messer, and M Wilson. Conservation outreach that acknowledges human contributions to climate change does not inhibit action by U.S. farmers: Evidence from a large randomized controlled trial embedded in a federal program on soil health. PLoS One
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Byerly, H, P.J. Ferraro, T. Li, K.D. Messer, and C. Weigel. 2021. A Story Induces Greater Environmental Contributions Than Scientific Information Among Liberals But Not Conservatives. One Earth. 4(4): 545-552.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Nielsen, K.S., Marteau, T.M., Bauer, J.M. et al. Biodiversity conservation as a promising frontier for behavioural science. Nat Hum Behav 5, 550556 (2021).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Wu, S, L.H. Palm-Forster, and K.D. Messer. 2021. Impact of Peer Comparisons and Firm Heterogeneity on Nonpoint Source Water Pollution: An Experimental Study. Resource and Energy Economics. 63: 10142.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Weigel C, S Harden, Y Matsuda,PJ Ferraro, L Prokopy, S Reddy. "Adoption of Conservation Practices on Rented Farmlands" Conservation Letters
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: Duke, J.M., Z. Liu, J.F. Suter, K.D. Messer, and H.A. Michael. Forthcoming. Some Taxes Are Better Than Others: An Economic Experiment Analyzing Groundwater Management in a Spatially Explicit Aquifer. Water Resources Research.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: Gharib M.H., L.H. Palm-Forster, T.J. Lybbert, and K.D. Messer. Forthcoming. Fear of Fraud and Willingness to Pay for Hybrid Maize Seed in Kenya. Food Policy
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Li, T., K.D. Messer, and H.M. Kaiser. Forthcoming. The Impact of Expiration Dates on Hedonic Markets for Perishable Products. Food Policy.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Li T, Ahsanuzzaman, and K Messer. "Is there a potential market for seaweed? A frame field experiment on consumer acceptance of a novel product" Marine Resource Economics
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Yuta J. Masuda, Seth C. Harden, Pranay Ranjan, Chloe B. Wardropper, Collin Weigel, Paul J. Ferraro*, Sheila M.W. Reddy*, Linda S. Prokopy* Rented Farmland: A Missing Piece of the Nutrient Management Puzzle in the Upper Mississippi River Basin? Journal of Soil and Water Conservation
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, PJ, P. Shukla. Is there a Replicability Crisis on the Horizon for Environmental and Resource Economics?
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: "Ellis, S.F., M. Kecinski, K.D. Messer, & C. Lipchin. "Consumer Perceptions After Long Term Use of Alternative Irrigation Water: A Field Experiment in Israel" Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy."
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ellis S.F., M Masters, K.D. Messer, C. Weigel, & P.J. Ferraro. "The Problem of Feral Hogs and the Challeneges of Providing a Weak-link Public Good." Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Reddy, Wardropper, Weigel, Masuda, Harden, Ranjan, Getson, Esman, Ferraro, Prokopy. "Effects of commonly-used message frames on conservation behavior"
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Rosch S., S.R. Skorbiansky, C. Weigel, K.D. Messer, and D. Hellerstein. 2021. Barriers to Using Economic Experiments in Evidence?Based Agricultural Policymaking. Applied Economics Policy & Perspectives. 43(2): 531-555.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Li, T. K.D. Messer, A. Mamadzhanov, and J. McCluskey. 2020. Preferences for Local Food: Tourists versus Local Residents. Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics. 68(4): 429-444.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, E.R., K. Advani, B.R. McFadden, T. Malone. 2020. "How Will COVID-19 Affect Halloween?" Choices
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: McFadden B.R., T. Malone, M. Kecinski, and K.D. Messer. Forthcoming. COVID 19 Induced Stigma in U.S. Consumers: Evidence and Implications. American Journal of Agricultural Economics.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Kecinski M., K.D. Messer, B.R. McFadden, and T. Malone. 2020. Environmental and Regulatory Concerns during the COVID 19 Pandemic: Results from the Pandemic Food and Stigma Survey Environmental and Resource Economics. 74(4): 1139-1148.
  • Type: Book Chapters Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Palm-Forster, L. and K.D. Messer. "Experimental and Behavioral Economics to Inform Agri-Environmental Programs and Policies." Chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Agricultural Economics. Editors. D Just and C. Barrett. Oxford University Press. 2021
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Messer, K.D. Every Drop Counts: Advancing Agricultural Water Reuse Through Transdisciplinary Approaches. World Microbe Forum. June 22, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Messer, K.D. Every Drop Counts: Agricultural Water Reuse Advances from the CONSERVE Center. Food Systems Friday. May 21, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Messer, K.D. "Grantsmanship in Agricultural, Resource, and Environmental Economics." Grants Panel for NAREA Scholar's Circle. Northeast Agricultural and Resouce Economics Association. April 19, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Alp�zar, F, M Bernedo, PJ Ferraro. Input efficiency as a solution to externalities: a randomized controlled trial. The Triangle Resource and Environmental Economics (TREE) Seminar, a collaboration of Duke University, North Carolina State University, and RTI International. (virtual)
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Alp�zar, F, M Bernedo, PJ Ferraro, and BS Meiselman. Exposure-enhanced goods and technology disadoption: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial with resource-conserving technologies. Georgia State University (virtual)
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Alp�zar, F, M Bernedo, PJ Ferraro, and BS Meiselman. Exposure-enhanced goods and technology disadoption: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial with resource-conserving technologies. Wageningen University & Tilburg University (virtual)
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, K.D. Evidence-Based Blueprints for Behavioral Change to Improve Coastal Water Quality. Chesapeake Bay Trust. October 27, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Paul, LP, J. Gao, P. Ferraro, and K. Messer. The Persistence of Conservation Cover Cropping. Paper presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting, Austin, TX,
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: "Li, Tongzhe, L Paul, K Messer, H Kaiser. ""The Impact of Expiration Dates Labels on Hedonic Markets for Perishable Products."" EAAE 2021 Congress C.P. 1.01: Economic Analysis of Food Quality "
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ellis, S.F., O. Savchenko, and K. Messer. Testing the Waters in a Pandemic: Challenges and Insights from Online Recruitment of Representative Samples for Economic Field Experiments. Paper presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting, Austin, TX
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Laura Paul. Politicization of [Covid-19] Risky Behaviors: Are Americans Inconsistent when Taking Politicized Risks? presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Laura Paul. The effects of defaults and anchoring in the Conservation Reserve Program enrollment process: results from a framed field experiment. presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Pallavi Shukla. Behavioral Biases Among Producers: Experiment Evidence of Anchoring in Auctions. presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Paul Feldman. Eliciting farmer discount rates and the implications of heterogeneous discount rates for agri-environmental program design and evaluations. presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Paul Ferraro. Experimental Economics Section Track Session, "Field experiments in Agriculture and the Environment" Session moderator at the Agricultural and Applied Economic Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Palm-Forster, L. 2021. "AgE MINDSPACE: Overview and Takeaways for the Bay," NFWF All-Bay Networking Forum, 2/10/2021
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Messer, K.D. "Conservation Auctions: Insights and Challenges from the Lab and Field". Special Session: Auctions for Natural Resource Management & Conservation. Austalasian Agricultural & Resource Economics Society, Sidney, Australia, February 9, 2021
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ellis, S.F., O.M. Savchenko, K.D. Messer. "Testing the Waters: Challenges and Lessons Learned from Online Recruitment of Representative Samples for Economic Experiments." AAEA, Austin, TX, August 1-3, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, K.D. What New Insights from the Behavioral Sciences Might Make Our Projects More Effective? Field to Market Cross-Sector Dialogue -- The Human Element: What Social Science Can Teach Us About Building Effective Sustainability Strategies for U.S. Agriculture, December 8, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, K.D. and L.H. Palm-Forster. Experimental & Behavioral Economics to Inform Agri-Environmental Programs & Policies. AAEA Workshop  Oxford Handbook on Agricultural Economics. October 26, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, K.D. Evidence-Based Blueprints for Behavioral Change to Improve Coastal Water Quality. Project WiCCED Seminar Series. September 30, 2020.


Progress 07/15/19 to 07/14/20

Outputs
Target Audience:CBEAR seeks to connect researchers and stakeholders that can benefit from the research, such as USDA program officials, government stakeholders, and leaders of non-profit organizations. More specifically, we engage economics and behavioral science researchers in academia, government, and nonprofit organizations who seek to be connected in discussions about cutting-edge research that uses experimental and behavioral economics methods to address agricultural, environmental, and risk management challenges. Once the research has been conducted, these findings can be shared with stakeholders through academic articles, presentations at professional conferences, and the development and distribution of CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs. In particular, the CBEAR Behavioral Insight Briefs are designed to provide summaries in manners valuable to program administrators and implementers, as well as policymakers and other stakeholders, including USDA program managers, Extension Risk Management Education Centers, non-governmental organizations, the agricultural sector, and scholars with an ultimate goal of achieving greater impacts on the ground, increased landowner and customer satisfaction, and reduced program costs. Additionally, through frequent collaborations and trainings with USDA staff and researchers, CBEAR aims to foster a culture of experimentation within programs at USDA. This culture encourages the program managers mentioned above to use simple experimental designs to test new ideas and to develop credible evidence supporting strategies that can improve performance, reduce costs, and increase returns on investments. By providing exemplars for empirical research designs, CBEAR also aims to facilitate NIFA's efforts to strengthen the quality and reliability of the empirical research it funds. Changes/Problems:Research across the country was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic that impacted the United States starting in the Spring of 2020. Our in-person research has been stopped since that time. However, many of our research projects continued as moved some research studies on-line and were able to develop new studies that could be conducted on-line. The biggest change was the postponement of the 2020 Conference on Behavioral and Agri-Environmental Research that was scheduled for November 13th and 14th at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. A new date is planned to be announced at a point when the virus does not pose a threat. We are also considering developing a novel CBEAR seminar series that builds upon the strength of the CBEAR Fellows network. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Training and professional development opportunities were planned for this reporting year. We worked with CBEAR affiliates to organize educational symposia held in conjunction with relevant conferences and workshops (e.g., AAEA annual meetings; AERE annual meetings; CAMP Resources, Appalachian State University's Environment and Resource Economics Workshop, and equivalent regional associations). Unfortunately, several of these were canceled or delayed due to COVID-19.These symposia were designed to target agricultural and environmental economists and graduate students who have interests, but limited formal training, in the application of behavioral and experimental economics to risk management and agri-environmental policy design. These symposia were aimed at introducing participants to theories and empirical designs from behavioral and experimental economics, and how such theories and designs can be used to inform and evaluate programs and policies. Some of these symposia were to include forums through which researchers can receive feedback from more experienced colleagues on the design and implementation of experiments. In addition, we identified opportunities to organize educational symposia attached to non-academic meetings or discipline-specific meetings, such as the annual ERME National Conference in 2019. These symposia offer opportunities to identify new collaborations with practitioners and ensure our ongoing research is relevant to today's program challenges.As shown in the "Products" section, we did participate in a number of these activities in 2019 and early 2020. However, with the onset of COVID-19, several of these projects had to be moved to virtual trainings or delayed. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Many of these research projects described in this report provide valuable information that was disseminated to the target communities of interest, such as policymakers and program managers. This was done not only through publication in peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences but also through the development and publication of Behavioral Insight Briefs, which seek to highlight an important finding or concept from behavioral science (e.g., the power of defaults; loss aversion; framing of incentives); (2) the evidence in its favor (or against), particularly experimental evidence; and (3) the implications for USDA programs. Additionally, the findings of CBEAR research were incorporated into three training modules developed for USDA Food Production and Conservation (FPAC) in 2019. FPAC is using these training modules in a variety of training programs. Other ways that CBEAR disseminates its information is through its website (centerbear.org), which provides a home for information about ongoing projects and initiatives, as well as current contact information for CBEAR fellows and program directors. The publication of behavioral insight briefs on the website is one way that CBEAR packages key understandings for current research for decision-makers. This series is comprised of short briefs that highlight (1) an important insight or concept from behavioral economics (e.g., the power of defaults; loss aversion; framing of incentives); (2) the evidence in its favor (or against), particularly experimental evidence; and (3) the implications for USDA programs. Each Behavioral Insights Brief concludes with ideas for experimental designs that can help USDA test innovations based on the insights from the brief. In addition to topic-specific briefs, we will also use the briefs to highlight particularly interesting publications. Also found on the website is a link to the CBEAR YouTube page, which acts as a collection of research talks at various conferences and animated videos breaking down behavioral science observations. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next reporting period, CBEAR is going to continue conducting high-quality behavioral economic research using experimental platforms and innovative designs. Note that we had anticipated that some of research would be conducted using in-person experiments and that is now being modified and/or delay due to the safety precautions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we have also used the built-in flexibility of our proposal to launch the new Pandemic Food Consumer and Stigma survey, a monthly national survey/experiment that we started in April 2020. This study involves over 1,000 adult consumers monthly and lets us better understand consumer behavior over time and provide the information to stakeholders in the agricultural sector. We will also continue to draw on the experience of our ever-growing network of existing and potential partners to expand the number and scope of experimental activities. CBEAR continues to use our experimental platform infrastructure and will keep placing greater emphasis on documenting the persistence of behavioral changes induced by agri-environmental and risk management programs. Ultimately, these programs cannot achieve their goals unless the changes in producers' behavior are long-lasting. Yet little behavioral research has focused on whether changes persist or on the types of programs most likely to induce lasting changes. CBEAR will continue to coordinate stakeholders to conduct research that can assist USDA programs and to expand the research base by sharing resources and funding innovative research. The Center will also carry on with the dissemination of research insights, which may look different moving forward due to the challenges of COVID-19. To more effectively communicate the current research, CBEAR will be investigating novel and effective online conference formats.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The Center for Behavioral and Experimental Agri-Environmental and Risk Management (CBEAR) Research has and continues to coordinate a consortium of researchers from major research and land-grant universities that apply the science of behavioral economics to understand the values and decision-making process of farmers, ranchers, and landowners. CBEAR has worked to gain new information from behavioral economics that can be rapidly incorporated into USDA programs. This tight coupling of research and applications comes from CBEAR's use of controlled field experiments in novel experimental platforms and in field collaborations with USDA program managers and their partners. During this reporting period, much was accomplished. We conducted high-quality behavioral economic research using experimental platforms and innovative designs that was able to inform agri-environmental and risk management policies. Specifically, our experiments have and will continue to: (1) elucidate the assumed behavioral mechanisms on which agricultural programs and policies are designed, including assessing the core rationality assumption of traditional economic theory, and (2) illustrate how changes in program attributes both large (e.g., offering technical assistance rather than financial incentives) and small (e.g., defaults, framing of incentives) affect important metrics of program performance. As shown in the section labeled "Products" in the previous section, during the past year we have published or had accepted 14journal articles and given 30selected and invited presentations.Additionally, we have 30 journal articles in various stages of development. Through several of these now-published papers started prior to receiving USDA-NIFA funding, they were actually initiated when CBEAR was receiving funding from the USDA Economic Research Service and were finalized with effort supported by UDA-NIFA. Additionally, many of these research projects provide valuable information was gained that needed to be disseminated to the groups that benefit from the information, including policymakers and program managers. This was done not only through publication in peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences but also through the development and publication of Behavioral Insight Briefs, which seek to highlight an important finding or concept from behavioral science (e.g., the power of defaults; loss aversion; framing of incentives); (2) the evidence in its favor (or against), particularly experimental evidence; and (3) the implications for USDA programs. Additionally, the findings of CBEAR research were incorporated into three training modules developed for USDA Food Production and Conservation (FPAC) in 2019.FPAC is using these training modules in a variety of training programs. Despite challenges raised by the coronavirus, we were able to coordinate with stakeholders to engage in research that can be of assistance. Meetings took place between CBEAR leaders and members of the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD), National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), and Field to Market. In 2019, CBEAR awarded the Commission on Evidence-Based Policy the CBEAR Award for Agri-Environmental Innovation, an annual prize to recognize leaders who incorporate and celebrate the use of behavioral insights in program designs to improve agri-environmental programs.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Savchenko, O.M., T. Li, M. Kecinski, and K.D. Messer. 2019. Does Food Processing Mitigate Consumers Concerns about Crops Grown with Recycled Water? Food Policy.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Wu, S, L.H. Palm-Forster, and K.D. Messer. 2020. Impact of Peer Comparisons and Firm Heterogeneity on Nonpoint Source Water Pollution: An Experimental Study. Resource and Energy Economics. 101142.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Butler, J.M., J.R. Fooks, K.D. Messer, L.H. Palm-Forster. 2020. Addressing Social Dilemmas with Mascots, Information, and Graphics. Economic Inquiry. 58(1): 150-168
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Li, T., K.D. Messer, H.M. Kaiser. 2020. The Impact of Expiration Dates on Hedonic Markets for Perishable Products. Food Policy.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Palm-Forster, L.H., P.J. Ferraro, N. Janusch, C.A. Vossler, and K.D. Messer. 2019. Behavioral and Experimental Agri-environmental Research: Methodological Challenges, Literature Gaps, and Recommendations. Environmental and Resource Economics. 73(4): 973-993.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Li, T, J Fooks, K Messer, and PJ Ferraro. 2019. "A Field Experiment to Estimate the Effects of Anchoring and Framing on Residents Willingness to Purchase Water Runoff Management Technologies." Resource and Energy Economics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2019.07.001
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Li T, Ahsanuzzaman, and K Messer. 2020. "Is this food local? Evidence from a framed-field experiment" Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Weigel C, L Paul, P Ferraro, M Masters, K Messer. 2020. "Recruiting U.S. Farmers into Economic Field Experiments"
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: Weigel, C., "Using Behavioral Economics in Conservation Practice." The Nature Conservancy Webinar. April 3, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Weigel C, S Harden, Y Matsuda, PJ Ferraro, L Prokopy, S Reddy. "Nudging Conservation: A field experiment in the American Midwest" Project Bridge Gong Show. Baltimore, MD. October 18, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Weigel C, S Harden, Y Matsuda, PJ Ferraro, L Prokopy, S Reddy. "Nudging Conservation: A field experiment in the American Midwest" Participant Agency in Field Experiments. Bloomington, IL. October 4, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., P Shukla. "Is a Replicability Crisis on the Horizon for Environmental and Resource Economics?" (Virtual), Dept of Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 8 July 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., Panel Presentation on knowns and unknowns in applying behavioral economics to conservation problems. University of Cambridge Workshop, 7 January 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., "A Closer Look at Farmers Discount Rates: An Experimental Evaluation", USDA-ERS Seminar (Virtual), 17 June 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P.J, P Shukla. "Is a Replicability Crisis on the Horizon for Environmental and Resource Economics?" (Virtual), AERE Summer Conference, 3 June 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Weigel C, S Harden, Y Matsuda, PJ Ferraro, L Prokopy, S Reddy. "Adoption of Conservation Practices on Rented Farmlands" Heartland Environmental and Resource Economics Workshop at Illinois. Urbana-Champaign, IL. September 28, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, P., C. Weigel, J. Fan, K. Messer. "Nudging Organizations: Evidence from three large-scale field experiments" Advances with Field Experiments Workshop. Chicago, IL. September 13, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Messer, K.D. 2019. "How to Network: Early Career Mentoring Workshop" Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, July 24, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Messer, K.D. 2019. "The Generalizability of Student Experiments for Use in Agri-Environmental Policy-Making." Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, July 22, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Messer, K.D., S. Ellis, M. Kecinski, T. Li, and O. Savchenko. 2019. "When WTP shows that consumers don't want environmentally- friendly" food: informing the use of recycled irrigation water." Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, July 22, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Allen, W and K.D. Messer. "Implementing the Science of Strategic Conservation for the Delmarva Conservation and Resoration Network." Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Maryland, October 9, 2019
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Messer. K.D. "Implementing the Science of Strategic Conservation for the Agland and Open Space Protection in New Castle County." Wilmington, Delaware, December 5, 2019
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Messer, K.D., "Presentation of the 2019 CBEAR Prize of Innovation to the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking." Brookings Institute, Washington, DC. Wilmington, Delaware, December 3, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., "Persistence." Keynote presentation at the Behavioral Science and Policy Association Annual Meeting (Virtual), 29 May 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., Plenary Talk."Behavioral Economics to Improve Environmental Programs Knowns and unknowns" at the INRA Workshop "Environmental and Natural Resource Conservation", 16-17 September 2019, Montpellier.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., Moderated the Expert Panel session at Workshop on Best Practices for Addressing the Replicability Crisis in Agricultural and Applied Economics. AAEA Annual Meetings. July 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., "Curb Your Enthusiasm: Overview of Best Practices in Empirical Research Design." Workshop on Best Practices for Addressing the Replicability Crisis in Agricultural and Applied Economics. AAEA Annual Meetings. July 2019
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., Introduction to Workshop on Best Practices for Addressing the Replicability Crisis in Agricultural and Applied Economics. AAEA Annual Meeting. 20 July 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Li, T., Ahsanuzzaman, K.D. Messer, "Is there a potential market for seaweed? A framed field experiment on consumer acceptance of a novel product" Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association Annual Meeting, Portsmouth, NH, June 9-12, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ahsanuzzaman, L. Palm-Forster, J.F. Suter, "Communications in the presence of environmental uncertainty in the commons" at the Behavioral and Experimental Economists of Mid-Atlantic Area (BEEMA5) conference, Villanova University, PA, October 4-5, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., Insights from Working with Agencies. Panel Presentation at Symposium Evidence?Based Policy: From Rhetoric to Reality", Technology Institute, Washington, DC. 11 November 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., Plenary Talk ".Improving program effectiveness by creating a culture of experimental evaluation" at the Annual Meeting of the Research Network on Economic Experiments for the Common Agricultural Policy (REECAP, September 9th and 10th of 2019 at the University of Osnabr�ck, Germany.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ellis, S.F., M. Kecinski, K.D. Messer, and J.L. Lusk. "A Neuroeconomic Investigation of Disgust in Food Purchasing Decisions." Paper presented at the Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association Annual Meeting, Portsmouth, NH, June 9-12, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ellis, S.F., "Essays on the Economics of Stigma and Disgust: Behavioral Evidence from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Field Experiments." Presented at the CONSERVE Scholars September Meeting, College Park, MD, September, 19, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Ferraro, P.J., "Food Systems Problems are Human Behavior Problems." November 2019. Food Systems Symposium. Baltimore, MD.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P.J, Plenary Talk."Behavioral Economics to Improve Environmental Programs Knowns and unknowns" at Workshop "Nudging for nature: Mapping the opportunities for improving conservation by better incorporating human behaviour", Cambridge University, UK. January 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ferraro, P.J, Insights from Working with Agencies. Panel Presentation at Symposium Evidence?Based Policy: From Rhetoric to Reality", Technology Institute, Washington, DC.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ellis S.F., M Masters, K.D. Messer, C. Weigel, & P.J. Ferraro. Forthcoming. "The Problem of Feral Hogs and the Challenges of Providing a Weak-link Public Good." Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Rosch S., S.R. Skorbiansky, C. Weigel, K.D. Messer, D. Hellerstein. Forthcoming. Using Economic Experiments to Promote Evidence-Based Policy-Making for Farmer and Rural Populations. Applied Economics Policy & Perspectives.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Weigel C, L Paul, P Ferraro, M Masters, K Messer. Forthcoming. "Recruiting U.S. Farmers into Economic Field Experiments" Applied Economics Policy & Perspectives.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Messer, K.D., "Testing the Effectiveness of Applying Nudges to Encourage Conservation Behavior: Lessons from Large-scale Experiments with USDA North American Congress for Conservation Biology, Denver, CO (Virtual), July 28, 2020.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: Li, T. K.D. Messer, A. Mamadzhanov, and J. McCluskey. Forthcoming. Preferences for Local Food: Tourists versus Local Residents. Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics.