Public willingness to pay for carbon farming and its co-benefits

Abstract

Governments worldwide have implemented climate change mitigation policies that aim to encourage abatement by changing agricultural practices. In Australia, farmers can gain carbon credits for sequestering carbon or reducing emissions. In addition to mitigation, these ‘carbon farming’ activities often generate ancillary (co-)benefits, such as creating native habitat or preventing erosion. This paper presents results of an Australia-wide choice experiment, conducted to estimate community values for climate change mitigation and the cobenefits of carbon farming. Values for carbon farming benefits are shown to depend on respondent's opinions about climate change. Respondents who do not believe that climate change is happening have a lower willingness to pay for reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions than people who believe climate change is (at least partly) caused by human actions. On average, respondents were willing to pay $1.13/Mt of CO2-e reduction. Respondents were willing to pay around $19/ha increase in the area of native vegetation on farmland. Value estimates for reducing soil erosion were not significant. Our results demonstrate that the community benefits from carbon farming extend beyond their effects on climate change mitigation. Future policies should take these positive values for cobenefits into account.