Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

In this thesis, we identify Swedish farmers’ injunctive social norms and the factors that influence a farmer’s ability to identify such norms. We use an experiment with incentivized coordination games on a sample of approximately 400 Swedish farmers. Treatments in the experiment vary whether participating farmers are confronted with an extreme or a normal year scenario. There is no large or statistically significant impact of this framing on farmers’ ranking of socially appropriate behaviours. We explore heterogeneity in the ranking, finding that farmers who reported to have witnessed an increase of these occurrences in the past five years report a lower capability of following social norms. We also found a positive correlation between the ability to follow injunctive social norms and the female gender of the farmer, as well as both environmental concern and investing propensity.