Determinants of agri-environmental measures adoption : do institutional constraints matter?

As a consequence of the ‘greening’ process of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the demand for an evaluation of actual agri-environmental measures (AEMs) calls for a deeper analysis of this policy instrument implementation. The idea behind this paper is that farmer willingness to participate is a necessary, but not always sufficient, condition for explaining the local adoption of AEMs. Specifically, the authors test whether AEMs adoption depends on the farms and farmers’ characteristics, and also on the local political and institutional framework. Discriminating between genuine farmer incentive and attitude towards AEMs, from the role of the local institutional environment, appears a crucial step towards a better understanding of agri-environmental schemes uptake. Empirical evidence found in the ‘universe’ of AEMs eligible farms located in the Lombardy region gives support to this hypothesis.