Regulatory stress lowers farmer well-being as much as financial factors and exposure to extreme weather

Recent evidence suggests that farmers face high levels of stress, depression, and anxiety, which have been associated with lower well-being and life satisfaction outcomes. While factors such as finances, climate, demographics, and social issues have been linked to these outcomes and associated interventions, little research has focused on the relationship between government regulations and their implementation with stress, especially beyond single farm types. To address this gap, we utilize survey data from more than 3400 commercial farmers, foresters, and growers (i.e. “farmers”) across New Zealand to examine how regulatory stress impacts well-being and life satisfaction vis-à-vis financial, climate, demographic, and social factors. We find that the majority of farmers perceive regulations – especially those pertaining to climate change and the environment – as stressful, but that their implementation (as opposed to the regulations themselves) are most correlated with lower well-being and life satisfaction outcomes. Importantly, stress associated with regulations and their implementation has a similar or in some cases larger association with well-being and life satisfaction than failing to make a profit or having been adversely affected by a recent, large, and economically damaging cyclone or extreme flooding. Finally, we observe that while some aspects of regulation and their implementation is consistently and negatively correlated with our three measures of well-being, certain regulations are negatively correlated with current well-being and life satisfaction yet positively correlated with future life satisfaction. That is, stress associated with certain regulations today is correlated with higher anticipated life satisfaction in the future. While we cannot establish causality in these results, we discuss how use of boundary organizations, reducing paperwork burden, and policy review processes could potentially be used to reduce regulatory stress and improve farmer well-being and life satisfaction in the short-term.