2001 年 3 巻 p. 1-14
This paper analyzes how pest control advisers induce inefficient pesticide spraying through their distorted advising. There are two types of errors that advisers can make: the type I error (failing to give advice to spray when pest density is high enough to necessitate spraying), and the type II error (giving advice to spray when pest density is low enough to omit spraying). However, farmers can detect these errors only if they avoid spraying. If advisers have a disposition to suffer sufficiently high psychic disutility with the type I error detected by farmers, they are likely to give advice to spray even when they expect that pest density is more likely to be low and that spraying is disadvantageous to farmers. When advising is distorted in this way, it is likely that farmers are misled to choose spraying when in fact spraying is expected to be disadvantageous to them, or that they fail to conduct spraying, disregarding the advice when in fact spraying is expected to be advantageous to them. In such cases, farmers receive no benefit from advice as a result of their erroneous spraying behavior. This kind of advice distortion can be caused by declines in the price of pesticide or in spraying costs, or by raises in the economic value of pest damage to crops.
