Climate Change Beliefs and Adaptation of Cocoa Farmers

The interventions seek to assess the impacts of different conditional cash transfer policies on climate change adaptation technology adoption, as well as the effectiveness of information under each policy. To address these questions, we evaluate three different conditional cash transfer policies targeting adaptation behaviors, with two of the policy interacted with an information treatment. This yields six treatment arms.

T1: Standard PES only. Participants will be offered a standard input-based PES contract, where a fixed amount of cash transfer will be paid conditional on shade level on the farm passing a certain threshold. No extra information is provided.

T2: Variable PES only. Participants will be offered a variable input-based PES contract that offers a lump-sum payment increasing in the threshold shade levels (namely, not eligible, low shade, medium shade, and high shade). No extra information is provided.

T3: Market-based variable PES only. Participants will be offered an output-based PES contract where an additional price premium is added to the prevalent cocoa price. The premium is increasing in shade levels (namely, not eligible, low shade, medium shade, and high shade). No extra information is provided.

T4: Variable PES + Information. Participants will be offered the same subsidy as in T3. Additionally, participants are informed of the rising climate change risks on cocoa production and the benefit of shade management in curbing the cocoa production decline during adverse weather conditions.

T5: Market-based PES + Information. Participants will be offered the same subsidy as in T4. Additionally, participants are informed of the rising climate change risks on cocoa production and the benefit of shade management in curbing the cocoa production decline during adverse weather conditions.

C: Control group: No subsidy nor extra information about climate change risks and benefits of the climate-change-resilient shade-grown practice is provided.

Participating in any of the subsidy programs requires an upfront enrollment fee which is non-refundable.

In each community, We will hold six lab sessions of 8-17 participants each. In each lab session, participants are invited to make shade management decisions on two cocoa farms with hypothetical growing conditions and are rewarded based on their realized gains (including both cocoa harvest and subsidy, if any) from one of the randomly picked farms. All other procedures are the same across treatment arms.

2023-03-28

2024-06-15

(1) Number of forest trees and fruit trees planted in the game
(2) Number of forest trees signed up for in the Green Ghana Program 2023
(3) Perceived cocoa yield under different weather conditions in the game
(4) Beliefs about climate change risks, including the likelihood of abnormal weather, and the impact of abnormal weather on yield
(5) Beliefs about benefits of shade trees, measured by the marginal impact of shade trees on yield

(1) Willingness-to-pay (WTP) for enrollment in the subsidy program(s)
(2) Beliefs about other farmers' participation in the subsidy program(s)

Baseline surveys took place from February to March 2023 in Nkawkaw and from February to March 2024 for Sefwi Bekwai, right after the cocoa main harvest season. The interventions (described in the Intervention section) using a lab-in-the-field design were rolled out in March to May 2023 in Nkawkaw and will be rolled out in March - April 2024 in Sefwi Bekwai. Fewer days are scheduled for Sefwi Bekwai due to a smaller sample size compared to Nkawkaw.

Data collection on the GPS coordinates of shade trees on each farmer's plots will be conducted separately pending logistics details. A follow-up survey is planned. We will track attrition along the process and use Lee bounds if attrition is imbalanced across treatment groups.

Not available

Computer software and simple lotteries

At the farmer level. We stratify the sample by (1) gender, (2) age greater than or equal to 55, (3) land size greater than or equal to 5 acres, and (4) community (20 communities in Nkawkaw and 10 communities in Sefwi Bekwai). This leads to 128 strata in Nkawkaw after dropping strata with fewer than 6 farmers; There are 80 strata in Sefwi Bekwai and the strata with fewer than 6 farmers are kept and randomly assigned to each treatment arm, to maintain a reasonable sample size.

The total number of strata in Nkawkaw was updated from 133 to 128. The update reflects the necessary sample replacement of the first 7 communities to address an implementation error in demonstrating game harvest in the control group. As a correction, the entire sample of six treatment arms in these 7 affected communities was replaced with another 6 communities following the same sample selection of large-size communities and farmers. Within these 6 new communities, we stratified the sample and randomly assigned farmers per community into six treatment arms in the same way. Consequently, 44 strata from the initial 7 communities were dropped and substituted with 39 strata from 6 new communities. This adjustment leads to slight variations in the sample size per arm.
This is updated after the experiment but before completing data collection.

Yes

1571 farmers in Nkawkaw and 744 farmers in Sefwi Bekwai

2 observations per farmer, which leads to 3142 observations at the land level in total for Nkawkaw, and 1488 observations for Sefwi Bekwai

T1: Standard PES only: 384 farmers (260 from Nkawkaw, 124 from Sefwi Bekwai)
T2: Variable PES only: 386 farmers (268 from Nkawkaw, 118 from Sefwi Bekwai)
T3: Market-based PES only: 390 farmers (264 from Nkawkaw, 126 from Sefwi Bekwai)
T4: Variable PES + Information: 375 farmers (255 from Nkawkaw, 120 from Sefwi Bekwai)
T5: Market-based PES + Information: 392 farmers (260 from Nkawkaw, 132 from Sefwi Bekwai)
Control: 386 farmers (264 from Nkawkaw, 122 from Sefwi Bekwai)