Competing Explanations for Indonesian Smallholder Participations in Sustainability Coffee Certifications

Abstract

The literature provides four competing explanations for farmer participation in sustainability standards and certification schemes: socio-demographic, economic, attitudinal, and institutional. However, little is known about the relative importance of these explanations. Knowledge about the relative importance is believed to lead to more effective standard implementation and smallholder inclusion. Up to now researchers provide different explanations for participation, and this paper aims to contribute to the literature by bringing some order in the current explanations. To assess the importance of the explanations mentioned in the literature, we collected questionnaire-data from Indonesian coffee smallholders in the  producing provinces of Aceh and Lampung, including 160 coffee farmers registered with global certification schemes (i.e. Rainforest Alliance, Utz certified, 4C, and Fair Trade), and uncertified farmers. The data were analysed with binary logistic regression. The results indicate that from the four competing explanations, the economic explanation is the most important, followed by the socio-demographic, institutional, and attitudinal explanations. Within the economic explanation, the prospect of a price premium and the prospect of increased productivity can be considered the most important motivations behind farmers’ participation. However, the prospect of increased productivity was only prevalent among farmers participating in 4C and Fairtrade. Utz and Rainforest Alliance farmers did not expect their productivity to increase through certification prior to their participation in the schemes.  Given these results, we conclude that it is difficult to establish a blue print for participation for all type of farmers.

Keywords: sustainability certification, coffee certification, binary logistic regression, farmer participation, explanation for participation, Indonesia