Participation, compliance and synergies at the farm level between the single payments scheme and farm certification labels

Most European farmers receive direct payments under the Single Payment Scheme and in addition, are member of farm certification schemes. Incentives to participate in these schemes are manifold: farm requirements often at least partially overlap, farm structure allows rather easy compliance, but also low monitoring intensities, detection rates, or sanctions may contribute to “free ride” on participation. The paper develops a theoretical model that explains farmer’s joint compliance behaviour and determinants of participation and tests the model using individual farm survey data. Evidence from the survey indicates that farmers weigh the relevance of compliance, control, detection and sanctions differently for the Single Payment Scheme and farm certification but strive to comply with all rules. Hence, potentially expected trade-off between costs and gains of participation and related compliance behaviour only partially occurs.