| Description: |
"Water quality degradation from farming remains a pressing collective action challenge despite decades of efforts to lessen the consequences of farm management. A small literature has examined the various ways informal and formal collective incentives could address this global problem. This paper considers theoretically important aspects of informal or formal group dynamics driving farm management decisions, including the roles of farmer identities, social conventions, and social norms, potential interdependencies arising from farm management and social networks, and perceptions procedural and distributional fairness important to rulemaking. Findings in the literature indicate that nonpoint source pollution problems stemming from row-crop agriculture function like a coordination problem among farmers within the broader social dilemma of water degradation accruing to downstream water users. Tackling the coordination aspects of farming standards likely entails improving shared concerns to draw on social norms and using on-farm trials and monitoring data increase salience across different farming audiences. Alongside these dynamics, addressing the social dilemma of water quality degradation may benefit from better targeting of private and public benefits and costs through individual and collective subsidies and restrictions. Additionally, devolving responsibility to farmer-trusted groups to identify preferred approach and facilitate knowledge exchanges can help to address perceptions of procedural and distributional fairness." |