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Climate Change Beliefs and Adaptation of Cocoa Farmers

Last registered on March 30, 2023
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Climate Change Beliefs and Adaptation of Cocoa Farmers
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0011145
Initial registration date
March 25, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
March 30, 2023, 3:32 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
Ghana
Region
Nkawkaw, Eastern

Primary Investigator

Name
Yunyu Shu
Affiliation
Brown University
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Jiayue Zhang
PI Affiliation
Brown Univeristy
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2023-02-11
End date
2024-04-30
Keywords
Agriculture, Environment & Energy, Lab
Additional Keywords
Climate Change, Conditional Cash Transfer
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
There is a lack of evidence for how heterogeneous beliefs of the population may affect the effectiveness and efficiency of incentivized subsidy programs. This project seeks to expand our knowledge of smallholder farmers' beliefs and actions towards climate change by examining how adaptation strategies respond to conditional cash transfers and information drops. We study this in the context of cocoa production in Ghana, where shade level management, i.e. growing forest trees on cocoa farms, is considered an adaptive farming practice to combat climate change. With a lab-in-the-field game design, we implement three subsidy interventions to examine cocoa farmers' different adaptation decisions on shade level. Apart from the standard payment for ecosystem services (PES), providing a fixed payment directly if the quantity of input (ecosystem services) passes a threshold, we consider two alternatives: (1) variable PES, which provides variable payments according to the input levels; (3) market-based variable PES, which offers an output-based price premium that increases with the level of ecosystem services. The cost-effectiveness of these three incentivized subsidies is ambiguous given the different distributions of heterogeneous beliefs. Additionally, we interact the two variable PES treatments with an information intervention to explore the role of correcting beliefs and its impacts on the effectiveness of the two subsidies, where farmers are informed of both climate change risks and benefits of the climate-change-resilient shade-grown practice. This draft was completed and registered after baseline data collection, but prior to the analysis of any follow-up data.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Shu, Yunyu and Jiayue Zhang. 2023. "Climate Change Beliefs and Adaptation of Cocoa Farmers." AEA RCT Registry. March 30. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11145-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
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.
Intervention Start Date
2023-03-28
Intervention End Date
2023-04-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
(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
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

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

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
A baseline survey will take place from February to March 2023, right after the cocoa main harvest season. The interventions (described in the Intervention section) using a lab-in-the-field design will be rolled out in March - May 2023. 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.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Computer software and simple lotteries
Randomization Unit
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) 21 communities. This leads to 133 strata, as the strata with fewer than 6 farmers are dropped.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
1627 farmers
Sample size: planned number of observations
2 observations per farmer, 3254 observations at the land level in total
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
T1: Standard PES only: 266 farmers
T2: Variable PES only: 274 farmers
T3: Market-based PES only: 277 farmers
T4: Variable PES + Information: 273 farmers
T5: Market-based PES + Information: 269 farmers
Control: 268 farmers
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Brown University
IRB Approval Date
2022-11-17
IRB Approval Number
2022003445
Analysis Plan