Public transaction costs of agri-environmental schemes and their determinants—Analysing stakeholdersʹ involvement and perceptions

Despite an overall budget increase for rural development in the new programming period (2007–2013), most older Member States in the now expanded European Union are facing a substantial reduction in their budget for rural development and thus for agri-environmental schemes (AESs). It can be assumed that, in most countries, none or at best only part of this loss can be offset by national funds. Therefore the design of more efficient national governance structures for AESs, which decrease public transaction costs (TCs), would be an appropriate solution to this problem. The objective of this paper is to define the factors that influence these public TCs, so that appropriate action can then be taken to reduce them. A statistical analysis, with a proxy for public TCs, is combined with an analysis of stakeholder perceptions (excluding farmers) concerning public TC influencing factors. The research showed that it is mainly scheme related factors that are perceived to be important, although the governance structure, institutional environment and level of trust also play a role. Finally, the analysis of perceptions concerning TCs also showed that AES related actors have a limited knowledge of TCs.