Our study used AFT survey data to analyze the preferences of registered voters with regard to the non-market (mulitifunctional) benefits that agriculture produces jointly with market commodities. Descriptive data analysis demonstrates that the US public considers the multifunctionality of agriculture as an important social issue. Regression models show that geographic regions can be very important in determining people's behavior with respect to the multifunctional benefits of agriculture. Voters living in Central Plains, Mountain, or West were generally less appreciative of the multifunctional benefits of agriculture when compared to those in Northeast region. However, if our study restricts the analysis to those who supported the multifunctionality concept, we have a dramatically different result: i.e., voters in the agriculturally abundant regions are likely to pay a significantly higher amount of additional taxes to support farmers for their supply of various multifunctional benefits to our society. This result suggests that it is important to take into account geographic regions when valuing the multifunctionality of agriculture and that the public's preferences can be quite heterogeneous within a particular geographic region.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association) in its series 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI with number
19430.
Length: Date of creation: 2005 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea05:19430
Contact details of provider: Postal: 555 East Wells Street, Suite 1100, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202 Phone: (414) 918-3190 Fax: (414) 276-3349 Email: Web page: http://www.aaea.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (AgEcon Search).
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: