Assessing the demand for hydrological drought insurance in irrigated agriculture

Concerns about hydrological drought risk and irrigation water supply reliability have grown in recent years due to the increasing demand for water for irrigation and other uses, and the decline in water availability due to climate change. Hydrological drought insurance hedging against water supply gaps can be a key instrument for adapting irrigated agriculture to this new scenario, since it improves the resilience of the irrigation sector, which is having to cope with increasing uncertainty and vulnerability. The objective of this paper is to assess farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for index-based hydrological drought insurance under different policy designs, considering several different amounts of insured capital, insurance deductibles, and contract terms. To that end, it uses a discrete choice experiment as the valuation method and the Sector BXII irrigation district (southern Spain) as a case study. The results show that farmers would be willing to pay for the proposed hydrological drought insurance, stating a higher preference for policy designs with lower amounts of insured capital, lower deductibles, and shorter contract terms. Moreover, the results also show the existence of heterogeneity among farmers’ preferences, depending on their socio-economic characteristics. Finally, we compare the distribution of farmers’ WTP for different policy design options of the proposed insurance with the commercial premium estimated using actuarial analysis. The comparison confirms that only the options with lower levels of insured capital present a mean WTP below the commercial premium, while the rest of the policy design options would need to be subsidized like other agricultural insurance schemes to make them attractive to most farmers. •Farmers are willing to pay for hydrological drought insurance.•Farmers prefer policies with low levels of insured capital, low deductibles, and short contract terms.•WTP is heterogeneous depending on farmers’ socio-economic characteristics.•Only policy designs with low levels of insured capital are currently commercially viable.•Once the new drought insurance is implemented, it will become more attractive for farmers.