Quantifying Loss of Benefits from Poor Governance of Climate Change Adaptation Projects: A Discrete Choice Experiment with Farmers in Kenya

Climate change impacts pose a great challenge to agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa as droughts become more frequent and more severe. A major roadblock to implementing climate change adaptation measures is poor governance. Given their experience with governing organizations, farmers are highly suitable to assess the appropriateness of different governing organizations to implement adaptation measures on the ground. We surveyed 283 farmers in Makueni County in Kenya applying the choice experiment method to assess their preferences in relation to different attributes of a sand storage dam project – including the organization governing the dam construction. We find that farmers prefer an NGO as the governing organization, followed closely by a farmer network and, with some distance, a government institution. For the whole of Makueni County, we find that benefits of $ 320,426 are lost if farmer networks are the governing organizations instead of NGOs and $ 1,779,596 if government institutions govern the dam construction instead of NGOs. On a methodological level, our study contributes to improving the application of choice experiments in developing countries as it draws attention to the importance of carefully selecting the payment vehicle for successful project implementation.