Constraints, persuasion or incentives? Marine aquaculture farmers’ preferences for green marine aquaculture policies based on the choice experiment

Abstract

A choice experiment was employed to assess the influence of various green marine aquaculture policies on motivating farmers to adopt environmentally friendly production practices. Five attributes—green subsidies, regulatory prohibitions, mariculture insurance, publicity and promotion, and administrative penalties—were selected to characterize green marine aquaculture policies. A mixed logit model was applied to assess policy preferences based on 210 samples from China. The results reveal that economic incentive policies, specifically green subsidies and mariculture insurance policies, are the most favored among marine aquaculture farmers. In contrast, command and control policies such as administrative penalties and regulatory prohibitions, along with persuasive encouragement policies (publicity and promotion), exert a negative influence on farmers’ willingness to adopt green marine aquaculture. Furthermore, younger farmers and those with fewer family members involved in marine aquaculture exhibit a higher likelihood of embracing green marine aquaculture policies.