4.5. Social capital
Farmers who have been well informed about a new scheme
have been found to be more likely to participate, which means that
making more information available on an AES (and therefore
reducing the farmers’ search costs), may increase overall
participation (Wilson and Hart, 2000, 2001) and encourage
existing members to renew their contracts (Morris, 2006).
Important channels for obtaining information include technical
advisors, extension, social and agriculture-related organisations,
technical media, and government. At a more technical level,
Bianchi et al. (2013) pointed out the lack of rigorous economic and
agronomic analysis regarding the link between schemes and
functional agrobiodiversity (i.e. biodiversity at the scale of
agricultural fields or landscapes, which provides ecosystem
services that support sustainable agricultural production) may
reduce participation in agri-environmental measures.