Socio-psychological factors influencing intent to adopt conservation practices in the Minnesota River Basin

Integrating Social Attitudes and Behaviors with Biophysical and Socioeconomic Factors for Enhanced Watershed Planning

Current watershed planning in many developing countries primarily focuses on biophysical features, often neglecting socioeconomic and behavioral factors. This study integrates biophysical variables with socioeconomic characteristics and behavioral traits, such as individualism, trust in government organizations, greed, environmental preferences, and perceived financial ability to develop a more comprehensive and sustainable approach to watershed management. The Ganj basin in Iran, consisting of three villages, was selected as the study area. Socioeconomic data from the traditional sanctums of each village were collected through surveys and interviews, and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was used to analyze the relationship between participation history and socioeconomic traits. These attributes were then mapped and overlaid with biophysical layers to guide planning decisions. Findings reveal that while traditional rural sanctums share similar socioeconomic conditions, they exhibit significant differences in behavioral tendencies, particularly in individualism, greed, and financial perception. The Ganj sanctum demonstrated the highest preference for participation in watershed plans. Additionally, the study highlights that relying solely on existing biophysical and socioeconomic government data is inadequate for comprehensive and participatory watershed management. Instead, local assessments, such as questionnaire-based studies, can uncover critical insights into both tangible and intangible factors, thereby improving planning accuracy. These findings provide valuable guidance for policymakers in designing management strategies tailored to the socioeconomic and behavioral characteristics of each sanctum, ensuring that watershed plans are more sustainable and long-lasting.

Integrated Assessment of Cost-Effective Water Quality Improvements in the Minnesota River Basin: Combining Stated Preferences and Simulation-Optimization Approaches

Voluntary incentive programs are central to U.S. agricultural policy, aimed at enhancing sustainability by improving environmental outcomes and increasing the supply of non-market ecosystem services. This study integrates econometric insights with biophysical modeling to identify cost-effective strategies for nitrate and sediment reductions at the watershed scale. Survey data from Minnesota River Basin farmers characterizes willingness to accept (WTA) distributions for wetland restoration, cover crops, and nutrient management. A mixed logit model reveals significant heterogeneity in WTA, influenced by income, farm size, political leanings, taxes, water impairments, and non-pecuniary factors like ecosystem service appreciation, conservation experience, and stewardship. Integrated modeling highlights fluvial wetland restoration as a cost-effective and impactful strategy. Up to a 43% nitrogen reduction and 82% sediment reduction may be attained at an annual cost of under $10 million through targeted conservation investments. Scenarios with lower costs ($5 million annually) achieve substantial sediment reductions (82%) but limited nitrogen reductions (22%), demonstrating the utility of multi-objective optimization frameworks to elucidate optimal trade-offs in watershed planning.

Cover crops as climate insurance: Exploring the role of crop insurance discounts to promote climate adaptation and mitigate risk

Climate adaptation is vital for agriculture to manage the growing risks from more frequent droughts, floods, and extreme heat. Yet, adaptation measures remain underused in some of the most agriculturally productive regions, such as the U.S. Cornbelt. Cover crops represent a growing but still underutilized adaptation measure that offers co-benefits to farmers and society. In this study we examine farmers' perceptions of cover crops as a climate adaptation tool and explore the potential for integrating cover crops into existing crop insurance. We surveyed 1023 farmers in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa to examine what factors shape cover crop acreage, intensity (percent of farm with cover crops), and farmers' future cover crop plans through negative binomial and ordered logit regression models. In addition, we explored farmers' views on policy changes to incorporate the use of cover crops into crop insurance decisions. We found that farmers largely do not perceive extreme weather as a factor in their cover crop decisions, but they do see cover crops as effective in mitigating some impacts of extreme weather. Nearly twice as many farmers reported neutral or improving cash crop yields following cover crops as those who reported declining cash crop yields. Perceptions of negative cash crop yield responses correlated to fewer acres, lower intensities, and plans for fewer cover crops, while positive yield responses only predicted plans to increase cover crops. Program enrollment, self-efficacy, and reduced tillage were all associated with higher cover crop intensities, acres, and plans. Farm size was positively correlated with more acres of cover crops but also lower intensities. Farmers were interested in crop insurance discounts and carbon markets as policy instruments but ranked cost-share programs as their top option overall. Future research should further explore the link between training, experience, and financial costs to inform what policy instruments will most effectively support scaling up cover crop adoption.

Social targeting conservation subsidies in the Western Lake Erie Basin

Achieving public conservation objectives often requires voluntary conservation on private land. However, some landowners are reluctant to participate in voluntary conservation programs, even when offered financial incentives. Heterogeneity in willingness to participate suggests that policymakers can improve conservation outcomes by strategically targeting subsidy program outreach, messaging, and design to landowners who are more likely to enroll, which we call "social targeting." This paper informs social targeting a subsidy to farmers to construct wetlands in the Western Lake Erie Basin in the United States. We use a discrete choice survey and a latent class model to identify preference heterogeneity and farmer attributes associated with willingness to construct wetlands. Willing respondents prefer larger projects, but fully subsidized construction is vital for participation. Simulation results highlight that even the most willing farmers are unlikely to install a wetland if construction is not fully subsidized. Policy practitioners should target outreach to younger farmers and larger farms. Outreach strategies should focus on private benefits from the wetland, such as aesthetic values and hunting opportunities, highlight farmer responsibility for Lake Erie water quality, and promote positive social norms surrounding wetland construction.

Prioritizing conservation practice locations for effective water quality improvement using the Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) and the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT)

Adopting the right agricultural conservation practices (CPs) at the right place is critical to maximizing water quality benefits. The Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) tool identifies all potential CPs and their locations within a target watershed based on the landscape characteristics. The ACPF tool suggests hundreds of CP locations in a watershed, making it challenging to prioritize the CP implementation. We develop and demonstrate an efficient approach using a multicriteria ranking technique for prioritizing the CPs suggested by ACPF, considering pollution hotspots and CP cost and effectiveness to support decision-makers. The pollution hotspots are estimated with simulations from an ecohydrological model, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The CP cost and effectiveness were estimated from CP installation costs and pollutant reduction efficiencies from the literature. The methodology was demonstrated in the Conewago and Mahantango watersheds in Pennsylvania, US, for grassed waterways (GWWs) and water and sediment control basins (WASCOBs) for sediment load reduction. Multiple CP prioritization scenarios were evaluated with individual and combined criteria for reductions in total sediment load, yield (loading per area), and cost. In single criterion-based prioritization, the cost-based and load-based prioritization indicated cost efficiency and fewer CPs, respectively. The yield-based approach correctly prioritized CPs in sediment loss hotspots in the case study watersheds; however, it needed more CPs to meet the target reductions. The multicriteria approach efficiently prioritized CPs in sediment hotspots to meet target reductions. Although this approach was demonstrated in two case study watersheds and for sediment loss reduction, it is applicable for any location or pollutant for which similar input variables can be provided, thereby providing a means for prioritizing the results of ACPF for implementation in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US.

Exploring innovation adoption behavior for sustainable development of Mediterranean tree crops

Introduction

The combination of knowledge, personal skills and company resources influences, all things being equal, such as the availability of new technologies, market conditions and other factors external to the company, farmers in their innovation choices. This study is an attempt to understand which psychological constructs influence the decision-making process of farmers specialized in typical Mediterranean crops with regard to innovation. Previous studies on the adoption of agricultural innovations have often considered socio economic characteristics and ignored the underlying motivational factors that influence the behavioral intention of farmers.

Methods

This study adopted three socio-psychological constructs, Attitude (ATT), Subjective Norm (SN), and Perceived Behavioral Control (PBC), derived from the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), and proposed three new constructs, Perceived Innovations Characteristics (PIC), Benefits (B), and Transferability (T), thus using an Extended Model of the Theory of Planned Behavior.

Results

The outcome of the multiple regression revealed that farmers' intention (I) to adopt sustainable irrigation innovations is positively influenced by attitude (ATT), subjective norm (SN), and perceived innovation characteristics (PIC). This last construct had mediating effects on the indirect relationships between PBC, benefits (B), transferability (T), and intention (I).

Discussion

The results provide numerous insights, useful both for outlining the demand for innovation and for calibrating future policies aimed at the primary sector, especially on the sustainable management of irrigation resources. In particular, the analyses carried out highlight the importance of factors external to the company as key levers in shaping the demand for innovations.