Contract farming (CF) is widely promoted as a means of improving smallholder livelihoods. However, participation remains limited, and contract violations persist in many developing countries, including Vietnam. This study analyzes the strategic interaction between farmers’ contract choices and agribusiness companies’ compliance decisions in CF within Vietnam’s Mekong Delta rice industry. The study utilized expert-based data collected from four rice production specialists and sixteen managerial and administrative officials representing key agricultural institutions in Can Tho and Hau Giang provinces of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. An extensive-form game with perfect information, combined with multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT), was developed to capture multi-actor decision-making processes and preferences across multiple attributes. Farmers choose between not participating, engaging in cooperative-mediated contracts with varying support levels, or opting for direct contract farming. Agribusiness companies, in turn, decide whether to comply with or violate these agreements. Our findings reveal that expected price is the most influential factor for farmers’ decisions, while expected profitability drives agribusiness companies’ choices. Cooperative-mediated contracts offering stronger support and monitoring lead to greater benefits for farmers and reduced exposure to contract violations. Conversely, direct contract farming with weak support often results in significant welfare losses for farmers due to agribusiness noncompliance. The subgame perfect equilibrium points to cooperative-mediated contracts with robust support, monitoring, and full contract compliance. This suggests that strengthening cooperative-based intermediary institutions, enhancing contract support and monitoring mechanisms, and designing contracts that align with all parties’ preferences are v ital f or f ostering s elf-enforcing agreements and sustainable contract farming arrangements. This study contributes to the literature by providing an analytical framework to examine farmers’ contract choices and agribusiness c ompanies’ compliance d ecisions. It offers n ew insights into how c ontract attributes and strategic incentives jointly shape decision-making and optimal strategies, thereby improving our understanding of how to design self-enforcing and sustainable contract farming arrangements.

ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
    1. Farmer’s Choice of CF Types and Contract Attributes
    2. Contract Strategies and Benefits of AgribusinessCompanies
MATERIALS AND METHOD
    1. Data Collection
    2. Method
RESULTS
    1. Farmer’s Payoff for Choosing Non-CF
    2. Farmer’s Payoff for Choosing CF Types underContract Compliance
    3. Agribusiness Companies’ Payoff under ContractCompliance
    4. Farmers’ Payoff for Choosing CF under ContractViolation
    5. Payoff of Agribusiness Companies under ContractViolation
    6. Comparison of Payoff for Each Outcome in theGame
    7. Subgame Perfect Equilibrium
CONCLUSIONS
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
적 요
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
REFERENCES
Appendix

• Le Thi Dieu Hien(Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Kangwon National University, South Korea) | 레 티 디우 헨 (강원대학교 농업자원경제학과)
• Jonghwa Kim(Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Kangwon National University, South Korea) | 김종화 (강원대학교 농업자원경제학과) Corresponding author