A socioeconomic analysis of biocontrol in integrated pest management: A review of the effects of uncertainty, irreversibility and flexibility

摘要

European regulations on the sustainable use of pesticides aim to promote integrated pest management (IPM) strategy and the use of biological control agents. However, uncertainty over benefits and costs, irreversibility effects as well as flexibility in adoption of this technology needs to be considered. Economic evaluation of IPM using simple cost-benefit analysis may be inadequate. Therefore, the need to develop evaluation tools that takes the aforementioned constraints into consideration is imperative. To this end, we introduce the maximum incremental social tolerable irreversible costs (MISTICs) as a tool for such evaluation. Only when the incremental reversible benefits of the IPM strategy outweigh possible irreversible costs of such a strategy by a minimum threshold (hurdle rate) should introduction of biocontrol be considered. Our approach allows assessment of an IPM strategy from a private (farmers) point of view to be extended to a social context.