Public-private partnerships for the management of plant pests

The number of plant disease and pest outbreaks is increasing rapidly as a consequence of globalisation and climate change. Developing efficient and effective management plans for prevention and control is of key importance to avoid economic, environmental and human health impacts. Private-public partnerships (PPPs) for biosecurity are policies where the public and private sector agree on a division of the costs and responsibility obligations for action and control prior to an outbreak. It has been argued that PPPs can encourage a consistent and coordinated management approach to biosecurity, thus facilitating early response and achieving economies of scale that otherwise would not be possible. This thesis aims to inform the design of collaborative and contingent PPP to manage pests and diseases, particularly focusing on how to incentivise private investments in biosecurity. The thesis is comprised of three interconnected research projects exploring three key elements of PPPs: risk and responsibility sharing, cost sharing, and private agent preferences for engagement within such schemes. I used three different methodological approaches, contract theory, game theory, and choice experiments to model agent behaviours and interactions between the public and private sector. Key findings show the following: (i) a cost and risk sharing approach can deliver increased biosecurity by having government contingent compensation payments to private agents prior to outbreaks; (ii) tailoring plant health policy between pure and impure public goods can lead to more cost-effective schemes; (iii) targeting schemes to best serve the needs of agents by, for example, partially subsidising industry and national initiatives, developing more flexible, simplified and consolidated policies, and incentivising stakeholder engagement in policy design. The thesis also provides a foundation to stimulate further applications of contract theory, game theoretical methods, and choice experiments to answer important policy questions regarding biosecurity.