IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/agecon/v51y2020i3p359-372.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Risk preferences of commodity crop producers and specialty crop producers: An application of prospect theory

Author

Listed:
  • Shuoli Zhao
  • Chengyan Yue

Abstract

Producers’ decisions, such as crop insurance, contract agreement, and technology adoption, involve considerable risk and uncertainty. Particularly, specialty crop production is more vulnerable to risk and requires more intensive management than commodity crop production, while risk mitigation tools for specialty crop production are comparatively limited. We apply Prospect Theory (PT) to analyze risk preferences of U.S. producers, and further compare the preference differences between commodity crop and specialty crop producers. Reference dependent, diminishing sensitivity, loss aversion, and probability weighting, as well as certain farm characteristics and producer demographics, are found to have a significant impact on grower risk attitudes. In addition, we do not observe significant differences in the base PT estimates between commodity crop and specialty crop producers. However, the relationships between risk behavior and individual characteristics vary between the two types of producers, which shed lights on the development of agricultural policies and provide implications for the design of contract and insurance.

Suggested Citation

  • Shuoli Zhao & Chengyan Yue, 2020. "Risk preferences of commodity crop producers and specialty crop producers: An application of prospect theory," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 51(3), pages 359-372, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:agecon:v:51:y:2020:i:3:p:359-372
    DOI: 10.1111/agec.12559
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12559
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/agec.12559?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Frank Vossmann & Martin Weber, 2005. "Choice-Based Elicitation and Decomposition of Decision Weights for Gains and Losses Under Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(9), pages 1384-1399, September.
    2. Andrés J. Picazo‐Tadeo & Alan Wall, 2011. "Production risk, risk aversion and the determination of risk attitudes among Spanish rice producers," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 42(4), pages 451-464, July.
    3. Ho, Shuay-Tsyr & Ifft, Jennifer E. & Rickard, Bradley J. & Turvey, Calum G., 2018. "Alternative Strategies to Manage Weather Risk in Perennial Fruit Crop Production," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(3), pages 452-476, December.
    4. Joseph W. Glauber, 2013. "The Growth Of The Federal Crop Insurance Program, 1990--2011," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 95(2), pages 482-488.
    5. Moschini, Giancarlo & Hennessy, David A., 2001. "Uncertainty, risk aversion, and risk management for agricultural producers," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: B. L. Gardner & G. C. Rausser (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 88-153, Elsevier.
    6. Olen, Beau & Wu, JunJie, 2017. "Tracking the Evolution and Recent Development in Whole Farm Insurance Programs," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 32(3), October.
    7. Quang Nguyen & Colin Camerer & Tomomi Tanaka, 2010. "Risk and Time Preferences Linking Experimental and Household Data from Vietnam," Post-Print halshs-00547090, HAL.
    8. MacDonald, James M., 2015. "Trends in Agricultural Contracts," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 30(3), pages 1-6, August.
    9. Jisang Yu & Aaron Smith & Daniel A Sumner, 2018. "Effects of Crop Insurance Premium Subsidies on Crop Acreage," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 100(1), pages 91-114.
    10. Christensen, Tove & Pedersen, Anders Branth & Nielsen, Helle Oersted & Mørkbak, Morten Raun & Hasler, Berit & Denver, Sigrid, 2011. "Determinants of farmers' willingness to participate in subsidy schemes for pesticide-free buffer zones--A choice experiment study," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(8), pages 1558-1564, June.
    11. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    12. Maria Espinosa‐Goded & Jesús Barreiro‐Hurlé & Eric Ruto, 2010. "What Do Farmers Want From Agri‐Environmental Scheme Design? A Choice Experiment Approach," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 259-273, June.
    13. George Wu & Richard Gonzalez, 1996. "Curvature of the Probability Weighting Function," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(12), pages 1676-1690, December.
    14. James Andreoni & Charles Sprenger, 2012. "Risk Preferences Are Not Time Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3357-3376, December.
    15. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Han Bleichrodt & Corina Paraschiv, 2007. "Loss Aversion Under Prospect Theory: A Parameter-Free Measurement," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(10), pages 1659-1674, October.
    16. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Han Bleichrodt & Olivier L’Haridon, 2008. "A tractable method to measure utility and loss aversion under prospect theory," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 245-266, June.
    17. Géraldine Bocquého & Florence Jacquet & Arnaud Reynaud, 2014. "Expected utility or prospect theory maximisers? Assessing farmers' risk behaviour from field-experiment data," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 41(1), pages 135-172, February.
    18. Paggi, Mechel S., 2016. "The Use of Crop Insurance in Specialty Crop Agriculture," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 31(3), pages 1-6, September.
    19. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    20. Daniel Kahneman & Jack L. Knetsch & Richard H. Thaler, 1991. "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-206, Winter.
    21. Tesfamicheal Wossen & Thomas Berger & Salvatore Di Falco, 2015. "Social capital, risk preference and adoption of improved farm land management practices in Ethiopia," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 46(1), pages 81-97, January.
    22. Vassalos, Michael & Hu, Wuyang & Woods, Timothy A. & Schieffer, Jack & Dillon, Carl R., 2013. "Fresh Vegetable Growers' Risk Perception, Risk Preference and Choice of Marketing Contracts: A Choice Experiment," 2013 Annual Meeting, February 2-5, 2013, Orlando, Florida 142506, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    23. James Andreoni & Charles Sprenger, 2012. "Estimating Time Preferences from Convex Budgets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3333-3356, December.
    24. Ethan Ligon, 2011. "Supply and Effects of Specialty Crop Insurance," NBER Chapters, in: The Intended and Unintended Effects of US Agricultural and Biotechnology Policies, pages 113-142, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    25. Xiaodong Du & David A. Hennessy & Hongli Feng, 2014. "A Natural Resource Theory of U.S. Crop Insurance Contract Choice," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 96(1), pages 232-252.
    26. Jisang Yu & Daniel A. Sumner, 2018. "Effects of subsidized crop insurance on crop choices," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(4), pages 533-545, July.
    27. Han Bleichrodt & Jose Luis Pinto, 2000. "A Parameter-Free Elicitation of the Probability Weighting Function in Medical Decision Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(11), pages 1485-1496, November.
    28. Mercier, Stephanie, 2016. "Federal Benefits for Livestock and Specialty Crop Producers," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 31(4), pages 1-6, December.
    29. Booij, Adam S. & van de Kuilen, Gijs, 2009. "A parameter-free analysis of the utility of money for the general population under prospect theory," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 651-666, August.
    30. Babcock, Bruce, 2015. "Using Prospect Theory to Explain Anomalous Crop Insurance Coverage Choice," 2015 Allied Social Sciences Association (ASSA) Annual Meeting, January 3-5, 2015, Boston, Massachusetts 189682, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    31. Zhiwei Shen & Martin Odening, 2013. "Coping with systemic risk in index-based crop insurance," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 44(1), pages 1-13, January.
    32. Bin Miao & Songfa Zhong, 2015. "Risk Preferences Are Not Time Preferences: Separating Risk and Time Preference: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(7), pages 2272-2286, July.
    33. Glynn T Tonsor, 2018. "Producer Decision Making under Uncertainty: Role of Past Experiences and Question Framing," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1120-1135.
    34. Belasco, Eric & Galinato, Suzette & Marsh, Tom & Miles, Carol & Wallace, Russell, 2013. "High Tunnels Are My Crop Insurance: An Assessment of Risk Management Tools for Small-scale Specialty Crop Producers," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(2), pages 403-418, August.
    35. Bruce A. Babcock, 2015. "Using Cumulative Prospect Theory to Explain Anomalous Crop Insurance Coverage Choice," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1371-1384.
    36. Nguyen, Quang & Leung, PingSun, 2009. "Do Fishermen Have Different Attitudes Toward Risk? An Application of Prospect Theory to the Study of Vietnamese Fishermen," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 34(3), pages 1-21, December.
    37. Joost M. E. Pennings & Ale Smidts, 2003. "The Shape of Utility Functions and Organizational Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(9), pages 1251-1263, September.
    38. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    39. Norbert Schulz & Gunnar Breustedt & Uwe Latacz-Lohmann, 2014. "Assessing Farmers' Willingness to Accept “Greening”: Insights from a Discrete Choice Experiment in Germany," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(1), pages 26-48, January.
    40. Tomomi Tanaka & Colin F. Camerer & Quang Nguyen, 2010. "Risk and Time Preferences: Linking Experimental and Household Survey Data from Vietnam," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 557-571, March.
    41. F. van Winsen & Y. de Mey & L. Lauwers & S. Van Passel & M. Vancauteren & E. Wauters, 2016. "Determinants of risk behaviour: effects of perceived risks and risk attitude on farmer's adoption of risk management strategies," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 56-78, January.
    42. Brian E. Roe, 2015. "The Risk Attitudes of U.S. Farmers," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 37(4), pages 553-574.
    43. Manski, Charles F & Lerman, Steven R, 1977. "The Estimation of Choice Probabilities from Choice Based Samples," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(8), pages 1977-1988, November.
    44. Olivier Mahul, 1999. "Optimum area yield crop insurance," Post-Print hal-01952090, HAL.
    45. Thea Nielsen & Alwin Keil & Manfred Zeller, 2013. "Assessing farmers’ risk preferences and their determinants in a marginal upland area of Vietnam: a comparison of multiple elicitation techniques," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 44(3), pages 255-273, May.
    46. Liu, Elaine M. & Huang, JiKun, 2013. "Risk preferences and pesticide use by cotton farmers in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 202-215.
    47. Liu, Elaine M. & Huang, JiKun, 2013. "Risk preferences and pesticide use by cotton farmers in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 202-215.
    48. Bougherara, Douadia & Piet, Laurent, 2014. "The Impact of Farmers’ Risk Preferences on the Design of an Individual Yield Crop Insurance," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 183082, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    49. Nicholas C. Barberis, 2013. "Thirty Years of Prospect Theory in Economics: A Review and Assessment," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 173-196, Winter.
    50. Shan Ma & Scott M. Swinton & Frank Lupi & Christina Jolejole-Foreman, 2012. "Farmers’ Willingness to Participate in Payment-for-Environmental-Services Programmes," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(3), pages 604-626, September.
    51. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Emmanuel Kemel, 2014. "Eliciting Prospect Theory When Consequences Are Measured in Time Units: “Time Is Not Money”," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(7), pages 1844-1859, July.
    52. Schmidt, Ulrich & Traub, Stefan, 2002. "An Experimental Test of Loss Aversion," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 233-249, November.
    53. Olivier Mahul, 1999. "Optimum Area Yield Crop Insurance," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 81(1), pages 75-82.
    54. Pamela Katic & Tim Ellis, 2018. "Risk aversion in agricultural water management investments in Northern Ghana: experimental evidence," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(5), pages 575-586, September.
    55. Camerer, Colin F & Ho, Teck-Hua, 1994. "Violations of the Betweenness Axiom and Nonlinearity in Probability," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 167-196, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Géraldine Bocquého & Julien Jacob & Marielle Brunette, 2023. "Prospect theory in multiple price list experiments: further insights on behaviour in the loss domain," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 94(4), pages 593-636, May.
    2. Skorbiansky, Sharon Raszap & Astill, Gregory & Rosch, Stephanie & Higgins, Elizabeth & Ifft, Jennifer & Rickard, Bradley, 2022. "Specialty Crop Participation in Federal Risk Management Programs," Amber Waves:The Economics of Food, Farming, Natural Resources, and Rural America, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, vol. 2022(Economic ), September.
    3. Christoph Duden & Oliver Mußhoff & Frank Offermann, 2023. "Dealing with low‐probability shocks: The role of selected heuristics in farmers’ risk management decisions," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 54(3), pages 382-399, May.
    4. Géraldine Bocquého & Julien Jacob & Marielle Brunette, 2020. "Prospect theory in experiments : behaviour in loss domain and framing effects," Working Papers hal-02987294, HAL.
    5. Piancharoenwong, Assanee & Badir, Yuosre F., 2024. "IoT smart farming adoption intention under climate change: The gain and loss perspective," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    6. Alexis H. Villacis & Jeffrey R. Alwang & Victor Barrera, 2021. "Linking risk preferences and risk perceptions of climate change: A prospect theory approach," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 52(5), pages 863-877, September.
    7. Ming Zhu & Ruihua Yang, 2023. "The Impact of Agricultural Insurance on Farmers’ Enthusiasm for Sugarcane Production: Evidence from Guangxi, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-18, February.

    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. Géraldine Bocquého & Julien Jacob & Marielle Brunette, 2020. "Prospect theory in experiments : behaviour in loss domain and framing effects," Working Papers hal-02987294, HAL.
    2. Géraldine Bocquého & Julien Jacob & Marielle Brunette, 2023. "Prospect theory in multiple price list experiments: further insights on behaviour in the loss domain," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 94(4), pages 593-636, May.
    3. Xiaodong Du & Hongli Feng & David A. Hennessy, 2017. "Rationality of Choices in Subsidized Crop Insurance Markets," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 99(3), pages 732-756.
    4. Kpegli, Yao Thibaut & Corgnet, Brice & Zylbersztejn, Adam, 2023. "All at once! A comprehensive and tractable semi-parametric method to elicit prospect theory components," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    5. Adam Booij & Bernard Praag & Gijs Kuilen, 2010. "A parametric analysis of prospect theory’s functionals for the general population," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 68(1), pages 115-148, February.
    6. Zhao, Shuoli & Skevas, Teo & Chai, Yuan & Tack, Jesse B., 2020. "Crop Insurance Decision under Expected Revenue," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304574, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    7. Doidge, Mary & Feng, Hongli & Hennessy, David A., 2018. "Farmers’ valuation of changes to crop insurance coverage level – a test of third generation prospect theory," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274478, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    8. Thomas Sproul & Clayton P. Michaud, 2017. "Heterogeneity in loss aversion: evidence from field elicitations," Agricultural Finance Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 77(1), pages 196-216, May.
    9. Jonathan Chapman & Erik Snowberg & Stephanie Wang & Colin Camerer, 2018. "Loss Attitudes in the U.S. Population: Evidence from Dynamically Optimized Sequential Experimentation (DOSE)," NBER Working Papers 25072, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Douadia Bougherara & Laurent Piet, 2018. "On the role of probability weighting on WTP for crop insurance with and without yield skewness," Working Papers hal-02790605, HAL.
    11. Thomas Meissner & Xavier Gassmann & Corinne Faure & Joachim Schleich, 2023. "Individual characteristics associated with risk and time preferences: A multi country representative survey," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 66(1), pages 77-107, February.
    12. Horst Zank, 2010. "On probabilities and loss aversion," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 68(3), pages 243-261, March.
    13. Booij, Adam S. & van de Kuilen, Gijs, 2009. "A parameter-free analysis of the utility of money for the general population under prospect theory," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 651-666, August.
    14. Dogbe, Wisdom & Gil, José M., 2019. "Linking risk attitudes, time preferences, and body mass index in Catalonia," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 73-81.
    15. Golo-Friedrich Bauermeister & Daniel Hermann & Oliver Musshoff, 2018. "Consistency of determined risk attitudes and probability weightings across different elicitation methods," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 84(4), pages 627-644, June.
    16. Géraldine Bocqueho & Marc Deschamps & Jenny Helstroffer & Julien Jacob & Majlinda Joxhe & Ofce Observatoire Français Des Conjonctures Économiques, 2018. "The risk and refugee migration," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03607866, HAL.
    17. Campos-Vazquez, Raymundo M. & Cuilty, Emilio, 2014. "The role of emotions on risk aversion: A Prospect Theory experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1-9.
    18. B. Douglas Bernheim & Charles Sprenger, 2020. "On the Empirical Validity of Cumulative Prospect Theory: Experimental Evidence of Rank‐Independent Probability Weighting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(4), pages 1363-1409, July.
    19. Katarzyna M. Werner & Horst Zank, 2019. "A revealed reference point for prospect theory," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 731-773, June.
    20. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Olivier L'Haridon & Corina Paraschiv, 2011. "Experienced vs. Described Uncertainty: Do We Need Two Prospect Theory Specifications?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(10), pages 1879-1895, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:bla:agecon:v:51:y:2020:i:3:p:359-372. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaaeeea.html .

    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.