Who should control the provider of ecosystem services in buyer-driven governance? A choice experiment on orchards in Germany

Buyer-driven governance arrangements have emerged as a promising innovative approach to mitigate the degradation of ecosystem services (ES) in agricultural landscapes. In such arrangements, ES buyers, such as consumers, support ES provision by remunerating farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices through market-based mechanisms, such as price premiums for (certified) sustainably produced products. In this context, effective compliance enforcement is essential, as it assures ES buyers that the services are delivered in accordance with agreed guidelines. Consequently, the level of trust ES buyers place in the organisation responsible for enforcing compliance is critical. We applied a discrete choice experiment to investigate ES buyers’ preferences for the organisation responsible for compliance enforcement for sustainably produced agricultural products. The survey used conventionally managed apple orchards in Germany as a case study and focused on the implementation of ES measures (flower strips, hedgerows, flower strips plus hedgerows, and mechanical weed control instead of chemical control) to support regulating (biological pest control and pollination), cultural (enhancement of landscape aesthetics), and provisioning ES (production of marketable fruits). To elicit preferences regarding compliance enforcement, the survey included four organisations: a state agency, a farmers’ association, a conservation NGO, and a representative body – composed of relevant societal actors collectively responsible for implementing compliance enforcement. The survey included a representative sample of 901 ES buyers (apple consumers) drawn from the German population. We find that most ES buyers trust conservation NGO, representative body, and farmers’ association, while less than half trust state agency; furthermore, ES buyers are willing to pay a substantially higher premium when a trusted organisation is enforcing compliance. Regarding ES measures, we find that ES buyers are willing to pay price premiums for all measures supporting ES provision, with higher premiums for mechanical weed control and the combination flower strips plus hedgerows.