INFORMATION FOR POLICY DESIGN - MODELING PARTICIPATION IN A FARM WOODLAND INCENTIVE SCHEME

Incentive schemes which use farmers and landowners as agents of policy are now the main driving force for modifying the countryside environm ent. Nevertheless, policy-makers lack quantitative models that describ e farmers' response to schemes, and specifically! their entry decision s. This paper examines the benefits from modelling entry decisions wit h and without additional information generated through surveys of part icipants and non-participants. It uses legit models to predict the pro bability of entry into a farm woodland incentive scheme, initially usi ng only those explanatory variables that are available to policy-maker s from the annual farm census. The model performs well in identifying those factors pre-disposing farmers to entry. The potential gains from enhancing the information set by incorporating lifestyle and other va riables not recorded in the census are examined. The cost of additiona l surveys, and their small sample sire compared with the census, carts doubt on the value of such an approach which may reduce rather than e nhance predictive power.