Data on farmers' perception and acceptance of sustainability standards.

Abstract

The presented data informs about a comprehensive online survey on the perception and acceptance of farm sustainability standards amongst German farmers. We conducted the online interviews, with a total of 598 adequately answered questionnaires in summer 2017. The resulting sample is representative of German farmers, as the distribution of participants corresponds very well to the percentage distribution of farms in Germany. The survey contained a discrete choice experiment (DCE), a structured survey of 30 sub-aspects of rewards to be expected from the application of a sustainability standard and a risk elicitation lottery choice-task. Besides, the personal characteristics of the farmers (e.g. gender, education, communication behaviour, age) and farm characteristics (e.g. farm type, size, labour, profit) were recorded. Since the complete raw dataset cannot be published due to the privacy rights of human subjects and the stated data use agreement (DUA) with the participants, the present article demonstrates the data collection process, describes the parameter of the DCE and, present summary statistics of the sample. In addition, we illustrate the variables coding and data structure using a model data set with 10 generated entries. Further, a reduced and edited exercise dataset, which is structured analogous to the real dataset, is used to demonstrate the analysis of the DCE data step-by-step. The results and the interpretation of the actual DCE data analysis are published in the article 'Acceptance of sustainability standards among farmers' - empirical evidence from Germany' [1]. The survey data can provide further insights on farmers' expected rewards from participating in a sustainability standard, on the role of risk perception and tolerance of German farmers, and the role of communication behaviour in the innovation adoption context.