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Abstract
Economics has looked at the decision process of politicians but the decision process
of agency staff has primarily been the purview of sociologists. Agencies affect the final form
of regulations, they may enforce or ignore regulations that exist, and they provide
information to the political process. Policies recommended by economists for non-point
source pollution control are seldom implemented by government agencies.
This study examined the relationship between preferences for a particular policy and
the perceived farmer cost, farmer resistance, efficacy in salinity reduction, fairness, and
administrative costs. The latter were included to find whether transaction costs of
implementing policies affect preferences and whether this could help explain the existence of
current policies.
To test this hypothesis, a survey of people working on the salinity issue was
conducted. Contrary to what one might expect, perceptions of farmer cost and farmer
resistance were not highly correlated. When preference was regressed against farmer cost,
farmer resistance and administrative costs, only farmer resistance was significant. When
effectiveness and fairness were included as explanatory variables, they were highly
significant and the coefficients were quite large. Including perceived effectiveness and
fairness greatly improved the explanatory power of the model.