Pulse Producer Decision Making Under Risky Conditions: Will End-Point Royalties Change Preferences?

Abstract

In 2015, the Agriculture for Growth Act (C-18) came into effect in Canada. This Act modernized plant breeding by including amendments that aligned it with the 1991 International Convention for the Protection of New Plant Varieties (UPOV91) (CFIA, 2017). Regulations within the Act grant plant breeders the right to charge an end-point royalty (EPR) on harvested grain. This thesis is interested in assessing how provenance and framing, influence pulse producer seed choice decisions. This study created a prospect theory behavioral experiment to answer this question. The study concluded that producers are not overly influenced by provenance and framing and instead make decisions based on the expected utility model, except when questions are manipulated by both EPR and negative framing. The study also concluded that most producers (56%) are willing to tolerate a level of risk. This provided a way to profile producers by risk tolerance and found many similarities and few minor differences between those that are always risk-seeking, always risk-averse, and occasionally risk-seeking.