Adoption and continued participation in a public Good Agricultural Practices program: The case of rice farmers in the Central Plains of Thailand Saengabha Srisopaporn a , Damien Jourdain a,b, ⁎, Sylvain R. Perret a,b , Ganesh Shivakoti a a Asian Institute of Technology, SERD, P.O. Box 4, Klong Luang, Pathumthani, 12120, Thailand b Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, UMR G-EAU, 73, rue J.-F. Breton, Montpellier 34398, France article info abstract Article history: Received 2 March 2014 Received in revised form 18 February 2015 Accepted 23 March 2015 Available online 7 April 2015 To address increasing concerns for improved food safety, quality, and appropriate environmental practices of on-farm operations, governments and private sector are increasingly promoting standards for good agricultural practices. In Thailand, voluntary and free of charge Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification program was implemented by the government. It aims at mobilising farmers to improve on-farm operations to produce safe products and preserve the environment while reducing the costs of production. This study is a three-stage investigation into the factors and patterns of GAP adoption and continued adoption by rice farmers using successively probit for first adoption patterns, probit with selection models for continued participation, and comparison of practices among non-adopters, one-time only adopters, and continued adopters. The analyses are based on a survey of 250 farmers from Ayutthaya Province in the Central Plains of Thailand. Results demonstrate that adoption and dis-adoption are highly related to household labour constraints, land ownership, and initial high expectations regarding the market opportunities of the GAP produced rice. We found several encouraging differences between non-adopters and first-time adopters, indicating better pest and nutrient management. Although we observed an important rate of dis-adoption, we also determined that farmers are maintaining those better practices even after abandoning the program. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Certification Public standard Rice Adoption Good agricultural practices Food safety ASEAN 1. Introduction Agricultural innovation covers very diverse areas and has to respond to an increasing number policy objectives. Tradition- ally, agricultural technologies that help farmers using their production factors more efficiently (seeds, chemical inputs, labour, etc.) have long been promoted because of their impact on the agricultural sector competitiveness and poverty reduction. More recently, growing environmental and health concerns associated with modern agriculture have resulted in international and national initiatives to improve farmers' management practices for greater sustainability and to ensure that food products are safe for consumers. These new and sustainable practices pose new challenges since they require more complex technologies and knowledge, involve trade-offs between farms' productivity and sustainability, and have contrasted impacts depending on the location where they are applied (Guerin, 2000; Läpple and Van Rensburg, 2011; Knowler and Bradshaw, 2007). Moreover, agricultural policies are influencing farmers' selection of activities and technologies and are sometimes sending mixed messages to farmers. As a result, traditional programs using extension services to pro- mote sustainable cropping techniques are facing additional challenges at a time where most governments face budgetary constraints. For high-value crops, the private actors of the value-chains, e.g. the supermarkets, are taking over traditional governmental roles and use their power as buyers to impose production standards on farmers. Because certain of these standards are highly strict and detailed, there is a scientific Technological Forecasting & Social Change 96 (2015) 242–253 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Asian Institute of Technology, SERD, P.O. Box 4, Klong Luang, Pathumthani 12120, Thailand. Tel.: +66 8 02 65 70 14. E-mail addresses: saengabha@gmail.com (S. Srisopaporn), damien.jourdain@cirad.fr (D. Jourdain), sylvain.perret@cirad.fr (S.R. Perret), ganesh@ait.ac.th (G. Shivakoti). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2015.03.016 0040-1625/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Technological Forecasting & Social Change