Risk, ambiguity and willingness to participate in crop insurance programs: Evidence from a field experiment

This paper analyses smallholder farmers’ willingness to participate in crop insurance programs, using recent data from cocoa farmers in Ghana. Given the significance of output uncertainty and imperfect capital and insurance markets, we develop a theoretical framework to analyse how risk and ambiguit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Australian journal of agricultural and resource economics 2021-07, Vol.65 (3), p.679-703
Main Authors: Ali, Williams, Abdulai, Awudu, Goetz, Renan, Owusu, Victor
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
ambiguity aversion
Aversion
Cocoa
Crop insurance
Crops
Decision making models
Decisions
Discrete choice
Farmers
field experiments
Field tests
Insurance
Liquidity
liquidity constraints
Risk
Risk analysis
Risk aversion
Risk preferences
Small farms
Uncertainty
Wealth
Willingness
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Summary:This paper analyses smallholder farmers’ willingness to participate in crop insurance programs, using recent data from cocoa farmers in Ghana. Given the significance of output uncertainty and imperfect capital and insurance markets, we develop a theoretical framework to analyse how risk and ambiguity aversion, and liquidity constraints influence farmers’ crop insurance participation decisions. We employ field experiments to elicit farmers’ ambiguity and risk aversion, the stated preference approach to obtain information on farmers’ willingness to participate in crop insurance programs, and a discrete choice model to examine the factors that influence their participation decisions. We find that risk preferences, ambiguity aversion, and liquidity constraints influence farmers’ willingness to participate in crop insurance programs. The results also reveal that the probability of participating in crop insurance programs is positively influenced by wealth, trust and education of the farmers.
ISSN:1467-8489
1364-985X
1467-8489
DOI:10.1111/1467-8489.12434