Expert preferences for carbon farming contract design: an extended VIKOR-based decision-making

The complicated nature of carbon-based payments and their dependence on voluntary carbon market prices call for efficient carbon farming contracts that can ensure sustainable projects. This study treats contract design as a decision-making problem and applies a multi-criteria decision-making tool, VIKOR, to identify optimal solutions through expert opinions. The findings indicate that experts highly prioritize ‘hybrid payments’ and ‘training, advisory, and capacity building’ as key contract attributes. The preferences also vary significantly based on experts’ on-ground experience and professional characteristics, particularly for different incentive mechanisms. Combining the ranking results with literature-based causal relationships, we developed a decision-support framework that links contractual attributes to project performance. In conclusion, the results suggest that effective contracts are best designed with hybrid incentive mechanisms that provide support to the farmers and have robust certification systems, rather than single-mechanism approaches. Such contracts can translate the EU’s climate goals into scalable and credible carbon removal schemes.