Source: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS submitted to NRP
PERFORMANCE FEEDBACKS AND PEER COMPARISONS IN IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
ACTIVE
Funding Source
AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1026130
Grant No.
2021-67023-34486
Cumulative Award Amt.
$499,966.00
Proposal No.
2020-06925
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Apr 1, 2021
Project End Date
Jul 31, 2026
Grant Year
2021
Program Code
[A1651]- Agriculture Economics and Rural Communities: Environment
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS
(N/A)
FAYETTEVILLE,AR 72703
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
The overall goal of the proposed project is to investigate using comparisons of producers' Water Use Efficiency (WUE) to peers as a tool for water conservation. The proposed project will examine how receiving report cards with peer comparisons of WUEs influence water management practice (WMP) uses by the contestants of the Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contests (2018-2021), which are organized by co-PD Henry and are the first in the nation to target WUE. The proposed project will identify which WMPs and combinations of WMPs are associated with higher WUEs and quantify the spillover effects of the contests on non-contestant producers. The comparisons among peers instead of neighbors and the use of WUE, which aligns with producers' profit incentives better than water use alone, distinguish this project from the few studies on applying behavioral insights to agricultural water programs. A producer survey will be used to track producers' WMP uses between 2016 and 2022. Both contestants and a comparison group will be interviewed. The randomly selected sample from the 2016 Arkansas Irrigation Survey, conducted by PD Huang and Co-PD Henry, will be used as the comparison group. To minimize sample selection bias because participation in the contests is voluntary, statistical methods including matching, difference-in-difference, weighting and instrumental variable estimation will be used. The robustness of results will be checked with sensitivity analysis such as Rosenbaum bounds. Findings will assist water policy makers and producers in Arkansas and other states in decision-making. The project will train one Postdoctoral Associate and two Master students.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
0%
Applied
100%
Developmental
0%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
1110210301060%
6057310209040%
Knowledge Area
605 - Natural Resource and Environmental Economics; 111 - Conservation and Efficient Use of Water;

Subject Of Investigation
7310 - Experimental design and statistical methods; 0210 - Water resources;

Field Of Science
2090 - Statistics, econometrics, and biometrics; 3010 - Economics;
Goals / Objectives
The overall goal for the proposed project is to investigate the potential of performance feedbacks and peer comparisons as a policy instrument to encourage water conservation efforts as well as a tool to help producers make irrigation management decisions.The supporting objectives are: (1). To examine how providing information on producers' own water use efficiency (WUE) and comparisons to peer producers influence their uses of water management practice (WMP).(2). To identify which WMPs and combinations of WMPs are associated with higher WUE.(3). To assess the spillover effects of the Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contest.
Project Methods
1. To meet all objectives, the 2022 Arkansas Producer Survey will be conducted to collect information on irrigation technologies and water management practices by crop and by year (2016-2022). Contestants of Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contests and randomly selected non-contestant producers will be interviewed. Open-ended questions will be used to ask contestants of Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contests what other changes they have made as a result of participating in the contest and receiving the report cards. Non-contestant producers will also be asked if they were aware of Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contests in any way. If yes, when they learned about it and how they learned about it (e.g., through their social network or media). How many contestants they know personally and from which years of contests. Among these contestants, how many are in their close network (e.g., family members, friends or neighbor producers). A set of questions will be developed to measure the bounded rationality (the cognitive constraints producers may have in evaluating the cost and benefit of adopting conservation practices). The questionnaire will also collect information on producers' demographic and socio-economic information and farm characteristics.2. Secondary data sets will be gathered. (1). Daily precipitation and mean temperatures will be obtained from the National Climatic Center. The Palmer Drought Severity Index, the most commonly used drought index in the US, will be obtained from the National Drought Mitigation Center. (2). Data on water use efficiency and crop yields will come from the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contests. Information collected on contestants during the contests (e.g., farm size and crop acres) will be pre-populated into the data entry form.3. The fundamental challenge in achieving Objective 1 (to examine how providing water use efficiency information and peer comparisons influence producers' uses of water management practices) will be potential sample selection bias because participation in the Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contests was voluntary. We will use estimation methods commonly used for evaluating the effects of policies or programs. Sensitivity analysis will also be performed as robustness checks. First, matching estimators will be used to match each producer with one or more producers in the opposite group based on covariates that are time-invariant or were measured prior to the contests such as farm characteristics, producer characteristics, sources of irrigation water supply, % irrigated acres under gravity irrigation, share of total income from farming. Different sets of covariates will be used to check the robustness of matching results to the specifications of covariates. Systematic differences between the outcomes of contestants and non-contestants may still arise due to unobservable covariates. Rosenbaum bounds (Rosenbaum 2002; DiPrete and Gangl, 2004) will be used to assess the threshold level of such selection-on-unobservables at which point we will fail to reject the null hypothesis of no treatment effect. Second, Difference-in-Difference (DID) estimator will be used. The crucial assumption that validates DID estimates is the parallel trend assumption (PTA): in the absence of treatment, the difference in the outcome between the treatment and comparison groups would remain constant over time. PTA will be examined by visually inspecting graphs showing the levels of WMP uses by contestants and non-contestants over time. In the case PTA might be violated, we will conduct sensitivity analysis to check how robust the results are to deviations from PTA. Rambachan and Roth (2019) assume the pre-existing difference in trends persists and construct a confidence set for treatment effects, which is bounded by the threshold level of the deviation from the pre-existing difference in trends at which point we will fail to reject the null hypothesis of no treatment effect. Third, The DID matching estimator that will be used is to first difference the outcomes before and after the contest and then match producers with nearest neighbors to estimate treatment effects for each round of contest. 4. Both descriptive analysis and multivariate analysis will be used to examine which water management practices (WMPs) are associated with higher water use efficiency (WUE, Objective 2). WUEs will be plotted against the shares of irrigated acres a WMP is used. WUE is defined as the amount of crop yield produced for a specified amount of water input. WUE is calculated as part of the Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contest (Henry et al., 2019; Henry et al., 2020). WMP uses will be measured in three ways: a set of variables indicating the share of irrigated acres of a crop under a WMP, a set of variables indicating the share of irrigated acres under a group of WMPs and a set of dummy variables indicating which WMP group is used. Contestants will first be categorized by the number of WMP groups used (1 group, 2 groups, 3 groups, 4 groups) and by which groups are used (e.g., only field management WMPs are used, both field management and water flow control WMPs are used, all four groups are used). Average WUEs will be tabulated by categories. Only contestants are included in the analysis. Since the contestant sample is not a random draw from the population, data points on contestants will be weighted so that the sample is representative of the population of Arkansas producers. Following Nevo (2003), the weights will be estimated as a function of the selection probability (the propensity score or the probability of participating in the contests) using generalized method of moments (GMM) and information from the contestant sample, the non-contestant samples and the distribution of the size of irrigated acres from 2018 Irrigation and Water Management Survey (USDA-NASS, 2018). An alternative method that will be employed is to use the selection probabilities to construct a control function, which is then used as a covariate (Heckman and Robb, 1985; Wooldridge, 2015; Kline and Walters, 2019). Instrumental variables (IVs) estimation will be used since WMP uses may be endogenous. Potential IVs include WMP uses by a producer's close network (family members, friends or neighbors), whether the producer is aware of the state tax credits, and the percentage of producers in the county that have participated in any government conservation programs in the past.5. To quantify the spillover effects of the Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contest (Objective 3), survey questions will first be developed to understand how spillover effects have occurred. This will guide the statistical analysis. Spillover effects are most likely to operate through interactions between contestants and non-contestants when WMP and water use knowledge gained from the contest is shared. Another possible channel is through the 2018 and 2019 Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contests reports that contain information on individual WUE, water use and crop yields and are publicly available on the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture website. Non-contestants will be categorized as "connected" if they know one or more contestants or have read the reports. They will be categorized as "unconnected" otherwise. Spillover effects will be summarized using tables and graphs that compare the difference in changes in WMP uses before and after the contests between the "connected" and "non-connected" non-contestants. The same estimation methods as those used to achieve Objective 1 will be used to estimate spillover effects. The "connected" non-contestants will be viewed as the treatment group and the "unconnected" non-contestants will be viewed as the control group. Then the spillover effects can be estimated by the treatment effects.

Progress 04/01/24 to 03/31/25

Outputs
Target Audience:My efforts have researched policy makers from Arkansas Department of Agriculture Division of Natural Resources and Arkansas irrigated producers through my talk onthe 2024 Arkansas Groundwater Summit, Arkansas Department of Agriculture. (November 7, 2024), Rice Research & Extension Center, Stuttgart, AR. My efforts have reached other scholars working on Arkansas water issues through our talk on the 2024 Arkansas Water Resources and Watersheds Conference, "Insights from Arkansas's 'Crop per Drop' Contest Case Study," The Arkansas Water Resources Center, the Don Tyson Center for Agricultural Sciences, Fayetteville AR, AR, United States. (July 17, 2024). My efforts have reached scholars nationally that work on water resource policy issues through talks given at the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) annual meeting, the Southern Agricultural Economics Association (SAEA) 56th Annual Meeting. My efforts also reached interanational scholars in China that also work on irrigation research through invited seminars at the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China;Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing, China andChina Center for Agricultural Policy (CCAP) at Peking University (PKU), Beijing, China. (June 25, 2024). Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Currently two Ph.D. students are using the survey data collected for their dissertation research. One master student is using the survey data for her thesis. PD Huang is working closely with all three students, training them on literature reviews, survey data analysis and drafting research manuscripts. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Huang, Q., 2024 AAEA Annual Meeting Post Conference USDA NIFA AERC program PD meeting, "Performance Feedbacks and Peer Comparisons in Irrigation Management," Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA), New Orleans Marriott, New Orleans, LA, United States. (July 31, 2024). Huang, Q., "Assessment of Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contest," School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China., Beijing, China. (July 5, 2024). Huang, Q., "Assessment of Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contest," Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing, China. (July 3, 2024). Huang, Q., "Assessment of Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contest," China Center for Agricultural Policy (CCAP) at Peking University (PKU), Beijing, China. (June 25, 2024). Qiuqiong Huang, 2024 Arkansas Groundwater Summit, Arkansas Department of Agriculture. (November 7, 2024), Rice Research & Extension Center, Stuttgart, AR. Huang, Q. (Presenter), 2024 AAEA Annual Meeting, "Producers' Climate and Water Shortage Risk Perceptions and the use of Irrigation Best Management Practices," Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA), New Orleans Marriott, New Orleans, LA, United States. (July 30, 2024). Huang, Q. (Co-author), Caroline, E. S. (Presenter), Henry, C. G. (Co-author), the 2024 Arkansas Water Resources and Watersheds Conference, "Insights from Arkansas's 'Crop per Drop' Contest Case Study," The Arkansas Water Resources Center, the Don Tyson Center for Agricultural Sciences, Fayetteville AR, AR, United States. (July 17, 2024). Huang, Q. (Co-author), Bampoe, G. D. (Presenter), Feng, S. (Co-author), the Arkansas Water Resources Conference 2024, "Producers' Perception of Climate and Water Shortage Risks and their uses of Irrigation Best Management Practices," Arkansas Water Resources Center, the Don Tyson Center for Agricultural Sciences, Fayetteville AR, AR. (July 17, 2024). Dotse Bampoe, G. (Presenter), Huang, Q. (coauthor), Henry, C. G. (coauthor), Southern Agricultural Economics Association (SAEA) 56th Annual Meeting, "Producers' Perception of Water Shortage Risks and the use of Irrigation Practices," Southern Agricultural Economics Association, The Westin Peachtree Plaza, Atlanta, GA, United States. (February 2024). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Complete all research manuscripts and submit them to peer-reviewed journals. Publish fact sheets that share findings from this project with the public including policy makers and producers.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The analysis for Objectives (1) and (2) are completed. A Ph.D. student is working on writing up her first paper using the analysis results. The analysis for Objective (3) is completed. We have completed the research manuscript and will submit it to a peer-reviewed jouranl soon.

Publications


    Progress 04/01/23 to 03/31/24

    Outputs
    Target Audience:We have presented findings of this project on two conferences that are atteneded by scholars working on water resources issues from all disciplines including economics, agronomy, hydrology and engineering. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We have trained one Master student and two Ph.D. students on the skills of cleaning survey data and conducting statistical analysis with survey data. One Master student completed her thesis. One Ph.D. student completed his dissertation. Both used the survey data collected in the project. One more Ph.D. student joined the project and is using the survey data and the contest data for her dissertation research. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Both PD Huang and graduate students have presented results on academic conferences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?For Objective 1, we plant to evaluate the effect of a producer's ranking of WUE on the use of irrigation practices. We are in the process of obtaining data on 2023 Contest to increase the sample size of data used in the statistical analysis for Objective 2. We plan to send out manuscripts to journals for publication. We also plan to present our results to Arkansas water policy makers, who are working on updating the Arkansas Water Plan.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? The 2022 Arkansas Irrigated Producers Phone (AIPP) Survey data, collected in the last phase of the project, are used to examine how providing information on producers' water use efficiency (WUE) and comparisons to peer producers influence their uses of water management practice (Objective 1). A card that reports a contestant's WUE and how it ranks among all contestants was mailed to all contestants of the "Most Crop per Drop" Irrigation Yield Contest. During the 2022 AIPP survey, some contestants acknowledged receiving the report cards and read the card, while others did not notice the report card coming in the mail. The method of Difference-in-Difference is used to estimate the effects of receiving report cards on the use of irrigation practices between contestants who have read the cards and those who have not. No statistically significant differences were found. Data from the Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contests are used to identify which WMPs and combinations of WMPs are associated with higher WUE (Objective 2). Preliminary results from the first five rounds of the contests (2018-2022) show that the effects of using WMPs differ across crops. For soybean and corn, contestants that used one or more WMPs achieved higher WUEs than those that did not. The higher WUEs are achieved through lower irrigation applications and stable or higher crop yields. Rice production, however, presents a more mixed picture. Contestants who did not use any WMPs achieved higher WUEs than those who used one or more WMPs. One possible explanation is that some WMPs (e.g., alternate-wetting-and-drying) hurt crop yield even though they can reduce irrigation water use. We are still analyzing data to see if we can identify any combinations of WMPs are associated with higher WUEs. The 2022 Arkansas Irrigated Producers Phone Survey data are used to examine the spillover effects of the Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contest (Objective 3). Employing Difference-in-Difference and matching techniques, we compared contestants with two groups of non-contestants to account for the potential indirect impact of the contest on individuals connected to it. The first group of non-contestants knows about the contest. Some of them also know one or more contestants personally. This group is called the informed group. The second group of non-contestants is not aware of the contests and is thus the uninformed group. The spillover effects are measured by the difference between the informed and uninformed group. Our results suggest that participation in the contest is linked with a 4% higher average adoption rate of irrigation practices. Notably, 56% to 72% of this overall association is attributed to the spillover effects of the program. Further investigation into the adoption of individual practices suggests that the program has been particularly effective in promoting the adoption of "Computerized Pipe-Hole Selection." Compared with other practices, this technique is less costly and easier to use, requiring only the adjustment of pipe holes based on the determined water flow from the source.

    Publications

    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Osei, E., Q. Huang, C. Henry, Analysis of Factors Associated with Time to Adopt Irrigation Best Management Practices, Southern Agricultural Economics Association (SAEA) 55th Annual Meeting.
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: "Osei, E., Q. Huang, C. Henry, Analysis of Factors Associated with Dis-Adoption of Irrigation Best Management Practices, the 2023 UCOWR/NIWR Annual Water Resources Conference.
    • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Osei, E., Q. Huang, C. Henry, "Time to Adopt Irrigation Best Management Practices" the 2023 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting.
    • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: SHAHIN BAHRAMI, THREE ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMICS OF RESOURCE CONSERVATION IN AGRICULTURE, Dissertation, Texas A&M University, 2023
    • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Evelyn Osei, Adoption and Continued Use of Irrigation Management Practices in Arkansas, Thesis, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville


    Progress 04/01/22 to 03/31/23

    Outputs
    Target Audience:We have reached out to irrigated producers in Arkansas to recruit them for our survey and also interview them for surveys. We have worked with extension agents to recruit producers for the survey and helped us revising survey questionnaires. We have promoted the project and the survey in the University of Arkansas community including publicaitons in UARK Newswire, recruitment in job fairs and announcements in classrooms. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We have trained one post-doctoral research associate, one research associate, one Master student and one Ph.D. studenton the complete set of skills of implementing phone surveys withagricultural row crop producers. The skills include designing survey questionnaires, pretesting surveys, sampling producers,acquiring respondents' contact informaiton, following IRB protocal, recruiting phone interviewers, designing interview tranining manual, training phone interviewers, managing the survey process and suyrvey data quality control measures. We have trained 6 undergraduate students and 3 non-students on conducting phone interviews with agricultural row crop producers. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?PD Dr. Huang has advised faculty members at several Universities on conducting phone interviews with agricultural producers. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The following actitivies are planned for the next reporting period: 1. Complete data analysis. 2. Draft three research manuscripts to be submited for journal publications. 3. Draft policy briefs and information sheets that will be publicly available. 4. Disseminate results to stakeholders through meeting with prducers, extension agents and water policy makers in Arkansas. 5. Disseminate results on academic conferences.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? We have collected all data needed to conduct analysis to meet all three goals. To meet objectives 1 and 2, the main data set comes from the 2022 Arkansas IrrigatedProducersPhone Survey. Respondents of the survey included both contestants of theArkansas Irrigation Yield Contest and producers that never participated in the contest. To meet objective 3, we have gathered all data collected during theArkansas Irrigation Yield Contests. We have cleaned and orgaized the 2022 Survey data. Prelimiary analysis to meet all three objectives are underway.

    Publications


      Progress 04/01/21 to 03/31/22

      Outputs
      Target Audience:We have reached out to other researchers that work on the economics of irrigation management to discuss the project and obtain comments. PD Huang has also started to talk with colleagues who have done producer surveys in Arkansas. Changes/Problems:Change 1. The 2022 Arkansas Irrigated Producers survey was originally scheduled for Summer 2022. We have moved it to October 2022 since sample producers will be done with harvests and have mroe free time then. Change 2. PD and Co-PDs had conducted the 2016 Arkansas Irrigated Producers survey. The orignal plan was to use the 2016 survey sampleproducers for the control group. However, the research institutethat conducted the phone interviews, the Mississippi State University Social Science Research Center, had destroyed the links between the survey entry and the survey participant. So we have to start with the original list of producer phone numbers from which the 2016 survey sample was drawn. One master student from University of Arkanas is working on going through the list of phones to draw a random sample of producers. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project funded a Post-Doctoral research associate, who started at the University of Arkansas in January 2021. The project also funded a Ph.D. student from Texas A&M Univeristy, who also started in January 2021. The project also recruited two Master students and one program associate from the University of Arkansas. These membersare not directly funded by the project but are working on the project. In total, the proejct provides training for 1 Post-Doctoral reseacher, 3 graduate students and one program associate. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have been holding weekly project meetings. PD Huang has been talking to other faculty members at University of Arkansas to see additional research topics can be covered by the survey. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?(1). We plan to conduct the 2022 Arkansas Irrigated Producers survey. The survey was originally scheduled for Summer 2022. We have moved it to October 2022 since sample producers will be done with harvests and have mroe free time then. (2). In Summer 2022, we will pretest the survey by interviewing a few producers. We will also develop enumerator training manual. (3). In September 2022, we will recruit enumerators and train enumerators. (4). Late 2022 and early 2023, after the survey data have been collected, data will be cleaned and preliminary analysis will be conducted.

      Impacts
      What was accomplished under these goals? To meet objective (1), we plan to conduct the 2022 Arkansas Irrigated Producers survey. The survey was originally scheduled for Summer 2022. We have moved it to October 2022 since sample producers will be done with harvests and have mroe free time then. We have drafted the survey questionnaire. We have also gathered the contact information for producers in the treatment group (producers who have participated in the Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contest between 2018 and 2021). We have a separate list of phone numbers of Arkansas crop producers, from which the producers in the control group will be sampled. We are also updating the estimation strategy with a few new econometrics journal articles just published in 2022to achieve objective (1). To meet objective (2), we have obtained all information on the treatment group (producers who have participated in the Arkansas Irrigation Yield Contest between 2018 and 2021) that is available from the contest (water use, level of rainfall, crop yield), and the contest entry form (e.g., water management practices used, field size). Statistical analysis is underway to identify which WMPs and combinations of WMPs are associated with higher WUEs. To meet objective (3), we have added questions in the survey questionnaire that ask if a producer in the control group if he/she knows about the Arkansas Irrigaiotn Yield Contest, if he/she knows any participants of the contests. We continue to search literature to see if any more questions can be added to address the spillover effects. To meet all three objectives, we also plan to access the USDA-NAASIrrigation and Water Management Survey farm level data (2018 and previous rounds) to supplement the 2022 Arkansas Irrigation Survey. We have submitted the request to access data to NASS.

      Publications