Impacts of information about COVID-19 on pig farmers’ production willingness and behavior: Evidence from China

Abstract

This paper examines the impacts of information about COVID-19 on pig farmers’ production willingness by using endorsement experiments and follow-up surveys conducted in 2020 and 2021 in China. Our results show that, first, farmers were less willing to scale up production when they received information about COVID-19. The information in 2020 that the second wave of COVID-19 might occur without a vaccine reduced farmers’ willingness to scale up by 13.4%, while the information in 2021 that COVID-19 might continue to spread despite the introduction of vaccine reduced farmers’ willingness by 4.4%. Second, farmers whose production was affected by COVID-19 were considerably less willing to scale up, given the access to COVID-19 information. Third, farmers’ production willingness can predict their actual production behavior.

Keywords

• COVID-19
• randomized experiment
• information treatment
• production willingness