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Does the Identifiable Victim Effect Matter for Plants? Results From a Quasi-experimental Survey of French Farmers

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  • Pellegrin, Claire
  • Grolleau, Gilles
  • Mzoughi, Naoufel
  • Napoleone, Claude

Abstract

Numerous studies showed that people respond more generously to individual identified victims than to equivalent statistical victims, which is referred to as the “identifiable victim effect” (IVE). While the previous literature examined the IVE for human and animal victims, we focus on vegetal entities that can be threatened. Thanks to a between design allowing to increase the degree of plants' identifiability, we test whether IVE is likely to enhance farmers' participation in a conservation program, using mail survey data among a sample of French farmers located in the Vaucluse area. Unlike humans and animals, we found that IVE does not matter regarding plants, as farmer willingness to participate in the compensation measures was found to decrease as the (plant) victim(s) become more identifiable. Moreover, this figure is even stronger with respect to organic farmers compared to their conventional counterparts.

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  • Pellegrin, Claire & Grolleau, Gilles & Mzoughi, Naoufel & Napoleone, Claude, 2018. "Does the Identifiable Victim Effect Matter for Plants? Results From a Quasi-experimental Survey of French Farmers," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 106-113.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:151:y:2018:i:c:p:106-113
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.05.001
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    Cited by:

    1. Grolleau, Gilles & Ibanez, Lisette & Mzoughi, Naoufel, 2020. "Moral judgment of environmental harm caused by a single versus multiple wrongdoers: A survey experiment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    2. Douadia Bougherara & Lea Gosset & Raphaële Préget & Sophie Thoyer, 2023. "Innovativeness, innovation adoption and priming: Nudging farmers in a large-scale randomized experiment in France," Post-Print hal-04227775, HAL.
    3. Sergei Schaub & Jaboury Ghazoul & Robert Huber & Wei Zhang & Adelaide Sander & Charles Rees & Simanti Banerjee & Robert Finger, 2023. "The role of behavioural factors and opportunity costs in farmers' participation in voluntary agri‐environmental schemes: A systematic review," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(3), pages 617-660, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Environmental policy; Farmers; Identifiable victim effect; Nudge; Plant blindness;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q19 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Other
    • Q28 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Government Policy
    • Q38 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Government Policy (includes OPEC Policy)
    • Q57 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Ecological Economics

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