Farmers, experts and students’ subjective probability distributions on methane emission reductions in livestock farming: An experimental comparison across elicitation methods

Abstract

Subjective probabilities are important determinants of economic choice behaviour, and their elicitation is not trivial. Different methods are available in the literature. This paper compares three of them using an economic experiment with farmers, other experts (animal nutrition and production scientists, vets, as well as animal feed, dairy, and meat company representatives), and agricultural students: the frequency method (FM), the interval method (IM), and the quadratic scoring rule method (QSR). These methods vary in the degree of complexity and saliency of the incentive scheme. Elicited subjective probability distributions refer to methane emissions reductions that can be achieved by changing animal diets in livestock farming. The study investigates whether these methods produce consistent results across methods and participant groups. Subjective probability distributions do not significantly differ across methods and participant groups. Overall, these results support that the use of less complex methods such as the FM and IM may be preferable