Existing agricultural sustainability standards are rarely applied in Germany despite persistent public attention being paid to sustainable farming and growth in markets for sustainable food. Beside the effects of sustainability requirements, important effects of organizational elements in standard design are expected to influence farmers’ standard acceptance. Therefore the development of a utility model is the behavioural economic basis for further research on farmers’ preferences in sustainability standard design. In this preliminary study, organizational standard elements are identified from the literature within the following categories: transactional and direct costs; market effects; risk of application; and farmers’ identification and social gains.