Understanding the participation in agri-environmental schemes: evidence from Tuscany Region

Agri-Environmental Schemes (AESs) represent one of the main agricultural policy instruments which address environmental objectives in Common Agricultural Policy. In spite of twenty years of application and its high share of RDP budget, several evaluation reports and scientific literature have measured a low environmental impacts compared with expectations. Economic literature has identified in low target level of schemes, low participation rates, spatial heterogeneity and asymmetric information between farmers and public administration the main reasons for low impact. The objective of the paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of determinants of agrienvironmental adoption. The objective is pursued combining results of farm level adoption analysis with spatial analysis of participation rate. Results show that both micro and meso-characteristics strongly affect participation to AESs. In fact, farm and household structure, quality of advice services and territory endogeneity, significantly affect AESs adoption.