[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v15y2023i9p7454-d1137806.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Transaction Costs in Agri-Environment-Climate Measures: A Review of the Literature

Author

Listed:
  • Salomon Espinosa Diaz

    (Department of Veterinary Science—Rural Economic Section, University of Pisa, Viale delle Piagge 2, 56124 Pisa, Italy)

  • Francesco Riccioli

    (Department of Veterinary Science—Rural Economic Section, University of Pisa, Viale delle Piagge 2, 56124 Pisa, Italy)

  • Francesco Di Iacovo

    (Department of Veterinary Science—Rural Economic Section, University of Pisa, Viale delle Piagge 2, 56124 Pisa, Italy)

  • Roberta Moruzzo

    (Department of Veterinary Science—Rural Economic Section, University of Pisa, Viale delle Piagge 2, 56124 Pisa, Italy)

Abstract
Agri-environment-climate measures (AECMs) represent a transaction of ecological capital between the government as the buyer of the agri-environmental goods and services produced in the farmland and the farmer as the seller. As such, they involve transaction costs (TC) that serve to safeguard the transaction from opportunistic behavior, problems related measurement, and other risks that can occur in the contractual relationship. These costs are an important factor in the design and implementation of any policy. However, analyzing TC is not easy. Several definitions have been proposed, and different strategies have been used to measure these costs. Despite a growing interest in this topic, research addressing the analysis of TC in AECMs has been rather scarce and lacking a systematic approach to make the different studies comparable and their results generalizable. This review article aims to provide a detailed overview of the current state of research related to the analysis of TC in AECMs by exploring the differences in methodological approaches, objectives, and scope among the most relevant studies available and by summarizing their most significant findings. It was observed that there are differences across the studies linked to their objectives in terms of the geographical context in which they are implemented, the actors involved in the program, and the objectives aimed toward in their analysis. However, the sharpest difference observed across these studies is linked to their methodological approach, which in most cases is focused on quantitative analysis. Most of these studies observed a significant variation in the magnitude and determinants of TC across different AECMs, which often depended on the characteristics of the schemes and the institutional environment in which they were implemented, as well as factors linked to specific characteristics of the farmer and/or their farming business.

Suggested Citation

  • Salomon Espinosa Diaz & Francesco Riccioli & Francesco Di Iacovo & Roberta Moruzzo, 2023. "Transaction Costs in Agri-Environment-Climate Measures: A Review of the Literature," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-18, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:9:p:7454-:d:1137806
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/9/7454/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/9/7454/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Laura McCann & K. William Easter, 1999. "Transaction Costs of Policies to Reduce Agricultural Phosphorous Pollution in the Minnesota River," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 75(3), pages 402-414.
    2. McCann, Laura & Colby, Bonnie & Easter, K. William & Kasterine, Alexander & Kuperan, K.V., 2005. "Transaction cost measurement for evaluating environmental policies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 527-542, March.
    3. Per Kristian Rørstad & Arild Vatn & Valborg Kvakkestad, 2007. "Why do transaction costs of agricultural policies vary?," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 36(1), pages 1-11, January.
    4. Coggan, Anthea & Buitelaar, Edwin & Whitten, Stuart & Bennett, Jeff, 2013. "Factors that influence transaction costs in development offsets: Who bears what and why?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 222-231.
    5. Williamson, Oliver E, 1979. "Transaction-Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractural Relations," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 233-261, October.
    6. Williamson, Oliver E., 1987. "Transaction cost economics : The comparative contracting perspective," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 617-625, December.
    7. Dahlman, Carl J, 1979. "The Problem of Externality," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(1), pages 141-162, April.
    8. McCann, Laura & Easter, K. William, 2000. "Estimates of Public Sector Transaction Costs in NRCS Programs," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(3), pages 555-563, December.
    9. Niehans, Jurg, 1971. "Money and Barter in General Equilibrium with Transaction Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(5), pages 773-783, December.
    10. Coggan, Anthea & Whitten, Stuart M. & Bennett, Jeff, 2010. "Influences of transaction costs in environmental policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 1777-1784, July.
    11. Jean-Francois Hennart, 1993. "Explaining the Swollen Middle: Why Most Transactions Are a Mix of “Market” and “Hierarchy”," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 4(4), pages 529-547, November.
    12. Mettepenningen, E. & Beckmann, V. & Eggers, J., 2011. "Public transaction costs of agri-environmental schemes and their determinants--Analysing stakeholders' involvement and perceptions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(4), pages 641-650, February.
    13. Aude Ridier & Charilaos Kephaliacos & Francoise Carpy-Goulard, 2011. "Private transaction costs and environmental cross compliance in a crop region of Southwestern France," International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 9(1/2), pages 68-79.
    14. Nantongo, Mary & Vatn, Arild, 2019. "Estimating Transaction Costs of REDD+," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 1-11.
    15. Sina Shahab & J. Peter Clinch & Eoin O'Neill, 2018. "Estimates of Transaction Costs in Transfer of Development Rights Programs," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 84(1), pages 61-75, January.
    16. McCann, Laura, 2013. "Transaction costs and environmental policy design," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 253-262.
    17. Gabriele Mack & Andreas Kohler & Katja Heitkämper & Nadja El-Benni, 2019. "Determinants of the perceived administrative transaction costs caused by the uptake of an agri-environmental program," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 62(10), pages 1802-1819, August.
    18. Kang, Shiteng & Kroeger, Timm & Shemie, Daniel & Echavarria, Marta & Montalvo, Tamara & Bremer, Leah L. & Bennett, Genevieve & Barreto, Samuel Roiphe & Bracale, Henrique & Calero, Claudia & Cardenas, , 2023. "Investing in nature-based solutions: Cost profiles of collective-action watershed investment programs," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    19. Phan, Thu-Ha Dang & Brouwer, Roy & Hoang, Long Phi & Davidson, Marc David, 2017. "A comparative study of transaction costs of payments for forest ecosystem services in Vietnam," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 141-149.
    20. Laura McCann & Roger Claassen, 2016. "Farmer Transaction Costs of Participating in Federal Conservation Programs: Magnitudes and Determinants," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 92(2), pages 256-272.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Coggan, Anthea & Buitelaar, Edwin & Whitten, Stuart & Bennett, Jeff, 2013. "Factors that influence transaction costs in development offsets: Who bears what and why?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 222-231.
    2. Shahab, Sina & Clinch, J. Peter & O'Neill, Eoin, 2019. "An Analysis of the Factors Influencing Transaction Costs in Transferable Development Rights Programmes," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 409-419.
    3. Phan, Thu-Ha Dang & Brouwer, Roy & Davidson, Marc David, 2017. "A Global Survey and Review of the Determinants of Transaction Costs of Forestry Carbon Projects," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 1-10.
    4. Nantongo, Mary & Vatn, Arild, 2019. "Estimating Transaction Costs of REDD+," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 1-11.
    5. Shahab, Sina & Clinch, J. Peter & O’Neill, Eoin, 2018. "Accounting for transaction costs in planning policy evaluation," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 263-272.
    6. Phan, Thu-Ha Dang & Brouwer, Roy & Hoang, Long Phi & Davidson, Marc David, 2017. "A comparative study of transaction costs of payments for forest ecosystem services in Vietnam," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 141-149.
    7. Sina Shahab & Leonhard K. Lades, 2020. "Sludge and Transaction Costs," Working Papers 202007, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    8. Valentová, Michaela & Horák, Martin & Dvořáček, Lukáš, 2020. "Why transaction costs do not decrease over time? A case study of energy efficiency programmes in Czechia," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    9. Fan, Shengyue & Yang, Jinfei & Liu, Wenwen & Wang, He, 2019. "Institutional Credibility Measurement Based on Structure of Transaction Costs: A Case Study of Ongniud Banner in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 212-225.
    10. Thiel, Andreas & Schleyer, Christian & Hinkel, Jochen & Schlüter, Maja & Hagedorn, Konrad & Bisaro, Sandy & Bobojonov, Ihtiyor & Hamidov, Ahmad, 2016. "Transferring Williamson's discriminating alignment to the analysis of environmental governance of social-ecological interdependence," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 159-168.
    11. Lapeyre, Renaud & Froger, Géraldine & Hrabanski, Marie, 2015. "Biodiversity offsets as market-based instruments for ecosystem services? From discourses to practices," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 125-133.
    12. McCann, Laura, 2013. "Transaction costs and environmental policy design," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 253-262.
    13. Lundmark, Robert, 2022. "Time-adjusted transaction costs for energy renovations for single-family house-owners," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    14. DeBoe, Gwendolen & Stephenson, Kurt, 2016. "Transactions costs of expanding nutrient trading to agricultural working lands: A Virginia case study," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 176-185.
    15. Georgina W. Njiraini & Djiby Racine Thiam & Anthea Coggan, 2017. "The Analysis of Transaction Costs in Water Policy Implementation in South Africa: Trends, Determinants and Economic Implications," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(01), pages 1-30, January.
    16. Asai, Masayasu & Moraine, Marc & Ryschawy, Julie & de Wit, Jan & Hoshide, Aaron K. & Martin, Guillaume, 2018. "Critical factors for crop-livestock integration beyond the farm level: A cross-analysis of worldwide case studies," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 184-194.
    17. Safa Baccour & Jose Albiac & Taher Kahil, 2021. "Cost-Effective Mitigation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Agriculture of Aragon, Spain," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(3), pages 1-19, January.
    18. Christine Léger Léger-Bosch, 2019. "Farmland tenure and transaction costs: Public and collectively owned land vs conventional coordination mechanisms in France [Régime de tenure foncière et coûts de transaction: terres publiques et c," Post-Print hal-02573765, HAL.
    19. Coggan, Anthea & Whitten, Stuart M. & Bennett, Jeff, 2010. "Influences of transaction costs in environmental policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 1777-1784, July.
    20. Ndebele, Tom & Johnston, Robert J. & Newburn, David, 2020. "Transaction Costs and Household Adoption of Stormwater Best Management Practices," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304338, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:9:p:7454-:d:1137806. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.