My current research activities are linked to the AgoraNatura project (click here for more info), in which I am responsible for investigating land managers’ preferences for privately financed Payments for Ecosystem Services schemes.

I will apply qualitative and quantitative methods, such as Q-methodology and Discrete Choice Experiments. For the moment, my PhD dissertation will be built upon the following three publications:

Discrete Choice Experiments Informing Environmental Policies - A Systematic Review

Approaching the question of how Discrete Choice Experiments have been used to inform environmental policies, specifically the design of Payments for Ecosystem Services schemes. The focus of this review will be placed on studies conducted with providers of Ecosystem Services, such as farmers, land managers or other individuals that actively shape agricultural landscapes on this planet. In this systematic review, we exhaustively analyse the institutional settings of the studies by comparing land use restrictions and contract design features of the individual publications. The open access link to the published study can be found here

Stakeholder attitudes towards Payments for Ecosystem Services scheme design

Using Q-methodology, we explored stakeholder attitudes towards institutional design features of Agri-environmental climate measures to identify factors affecting farmers’ uptake of conservation policies. For the context of this study, we interviewed farmers, policy makers and intermediaries, who facilitate the implementation of policy schemes. The open access link to the published study can be found here

Institutional design of privately financed Payments for Ecosystem Services schemes

Conducting a Discrete Choice Experiment survey with German farmers, I will analyse landowners’ preferences for the institutional design of privately financed Payments for Ecosystem Services schemes.

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Current work in progress

Using product labels to stimulate the provision of ecosystem services along the value chain - stakeholder perceptions

In this study, we apply Q-methodology to analyse stakeholder perceptions towards the potential to introduce product labels to inform consumers about generated ecosystem services along the value chain. This is part of the EU-financed project Contracts2.0. We conduct interviews with food producers, retailers and farmers’ organisations across Germany, Poland and Spain. A large-scale consumer choice experiment in Europe will follow this up. The link to the published study can be found here

Preference analysis for novel contract models in EU agri-environmental policy

Apart from AgoraNatura, I am also involved in the EU project “Contracts2.0 - Co-design of novel contract models for innovative agri-environmental-climate measures and for valorisation of environmental public goods”. My contribution here lies in modelling public preference and analysis of perceptions of label-based approaches to stimulate the provision of ecosystem services within the value chain. To achieve this, we will apply Discrete Choice Experiments and Economic Experiments to assess cooperation among farmers and their incentives to do so.

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Other research activities

Public preferences for peatland restoration in Scotland

The dissertation of my Master’s degree in Ecological Economics dealt with a public preference survey in Scotland, regarding restoration policies of peatlands. I was not involved in the design of the experiment (courtesy of Julia Martin-Ortega, Michela Faccioli and Klaus Glenk). Still, I had the chance to be the first person analyzing the data. The focus of my dissertation was people’s time preferences for peatland restoration and the role of framing effects on how restoration policies are presented to the public. The open access link to the published study can be found here.