Insect resistance management: adoption and compliance

This chapter discusses aspects of human behavior that affect the evolution and management of insect resistance and shows how a better understanding of this behavior can be used to improve insect resistance management. Individual farmers treat insect resistance as a common property problem, which means they do not have the incentive to manage it appropriately from a societal perspective. Therefore this chapter focuses on the problem from a public policy perspective. From this perspective, government regulators or stakeholder groups are interested in formulating and implementing policies in order to promote pest management practices that provide a greater benefit to society. Since pest management decisions are ultimately made by farmers, the regulator or stakeholder group can only influence resistance management indirectly. This creates what is referred to as a principal-agent problem. The two major behaviors relevant to this problem are technology adoption and compliance with regulations.