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.