Even though recognised to be of increasing importance, robust estimations of European farmers’ risk preferences are still scarce. Using an incentivised lab-in-the-field experiment with farmers, free of learning bias, this paper analyses the structurally derived parameters of risk preferences based on the cumulative prospect theory. The sector studied is the apple and pear sector in Flanders, Belgium. Farmers are found to be highly risk-averse and to distort probabilities by overweighting a small probability of desirable outcomes. However, there is no evidence of loss aversion on average, unlike previous studies. Moreover, investigating the heterogeneous effects shows that some farmers significantly differ from the representative agent by still being extremely loss-averse. The results of this piece of research prove the need to consider heterogeneity within and across sectors when assessing farmers’ risk preferences.

中文翻译：

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谁是厌恶损失的农民？来自结构估计风险偏好的实验证据

尽管被认为越来越重要，但对欧洲农民风险偏好的可靠估计仍然很少。本文通过对农民进行的激励性现场实验，在没有学习偏差的情况下，基于累积前景理论分析了风险偏好的结构派生参数。研究的部门是比利时法兰德斯的苹果和梨部门。农民被认为是高度规避风险的，并且通过过度加权期望结果的小概率来扭曲概率。然而，与以前的研究不同，没有证据表明平均有损失厌恶。此外，调查异质效应表明，一些农民与代表性代理人显着不同，仍然极度厌恶损失。