Understanding farmers' conservation behavior over time: A longitudinal application of the transtheoretical model of behavior change

The Role of Sustainable Social Work in Pro-Environmental Behaviors: A Mediation and Moderation Model

PURPOSE

This study seeks to investigate the effectiveness of psychological interventions in promoting pro-environmental behaviors by fostering resilience and self-efficacy in Iranian youth. Additionally, based on social cognitive theory, the research examines the role of sustainable youth social work in moderating these relationships.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A cross-sectional design was employed to collect data via a survey from 384 Iranian participants, using validated scales. Structural equation modeling was utilized to examine the relationships among the variables.

RESULTS

The results demonstrate a notable and substantial impact of psychological interventions on pro-environmental behaviors. Additionally, the findings indicate the mediating role of resilience and self-efficacy in the relationships between psychological interventions and pro-environmental behaviors. Ultimately, sustainable youth social work has emerged as significant moderators, enhancing the impact of psychological interventions on pro-environmental behaviors.

DISCUSSION

The findings from this study carry significant implications for the design and execution of psychological strategies focused on changing environmental behaviors. The study underscores the importance of psychological factors in shaping environmental behavior, thereby enhancing the overall understanding of sustainable behavior development in youth.

Knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and information needs of women vaccinated with the HPV vaccine regarding cervical cancer prevention: a cross-sectional study

Background

Cervical cancer poses a serious threat to women's health globally, especially in China. HPV vaccination and screening are crucial prevention and control measures. However, the screening coverage among Chinese women remains low, and there is a need to better understand the knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and information needs of Chinese HPV-vaccinated women regarding cervical cancer prevention to optimize prevention and control strategies.

Objectives

To explore the knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and information needs of women vaccinated with the HPV vaccine regarding cervical cancer prevention.

Methods

This cross-sectional study was conducted using a convenience sampling method from October 1 to December 30, 2023. A questionnaire survey was administered to 439 women vaccinated with the HPV vaccine at the Shu Shan District Community Health Service Center in Hefei, Anhui Province. The survey tool was self-designed. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and binary logistic regression.

Results

The average age of the 439 participants was 27.82 ± 6.42 years. The average cervical cancer prevention knowledge score was 35.01 ± 5.76. 434 (98.9%) women held a positive attitude towards cervical cancer screening, and 320 (72.9%) women had undergone cervical cancer screening after receiving the HPV vaccine. Educational levels such as college (OR = 2.995, 95%CI: 1.233-7.279, p = 0.015), bachelor's degree (OR = 3.694, 95%CI: 1.718-7.943, p = 0.001), and postgraduate and above (OR = 4.826, 95%CI: 2.176-10.707, p < 0.001), as well as occupation as medical workers (OR = 4.660, 95%CI: 2.292-9.474, p < 0.001), were associated with higher knowledge of prevention and treatment scores. Individuals aged 26-35 years (OR = 7.431, 95%CI: 2.856-19.331, p < 0.001), 36-45 years (OR = 11.466, 95%CI: 2.279-57.694, p = 0.003), married individuals (OR = 4.307, 95%CI: 1.455-12.750, p = 0.008), and participants who had received health education related to cervical cancer prevention (OR = 2.125, 95%CI: 1.169-3.863, p = 0.013) and possessed good knowledge of prevention (OR = 16.770, 95%CI: 8.667-32.451, p < 0.001) were more inclined to undergo cervical cancer screening. Among the 254 participants who had received health education, 34.2% still had unmet information needs regarding cervical cancer prevention, and 29.5% hoped to receive health education services from professionals.

Conclusion

Chinese HPV-vaccinated women have a good understanding of cervical cancer prevention and a positive attitude and behavior towards cervical cancer screening. However, their knowledge of cervical cancer screening is not sufficient, and their information needs have not been fully met.

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.

Understanding Reactions to Informative Process Model Interventions: Ambivalence as a Mechanism of Change

Transforming the course of protracted and bloody conflicts requires changing the behaviors and minds of society members who take part in these conflicts. While studies examining the psychology of such societies point to the barriers that conflict-supporting narratives create for changing minds and behavior, a novel psychological intervention offers a new direction to facilitate openness for attitude change based on the Information Process Model (IPM). Previous studies indicated the effectiveness of this intervention in creating an unfreezing of conflict attitudes and increasing support for peace negotiation in different conflict areas. However, since the psychological process underlying its effectiveness remains underexplored, the aim of the current research is to examine the experiences of participants exposed to IPM-based messages and the role of cognitive and emotional ambivalence in facilitating the unfreezing of conflict-supporting narrative and contemplating alternative beliefs. The first study (n = 234) examines how IPM (vs. control) videos increase engagement with and ambivalence towards conflict-supporting narratives using quantitative and qualitative analysis of written Decisional Balance responses. The second study (n = 24) delves into the expressions of cognitive and emotional ambivalence following exposure to different segments of an IPM video using semi-structured interviews, and further assesses their potential influence on facilitating contemplation with newly provided information.

Effective Engagement Techniques Across the Agricultural Conservation Practice Adoption Process

Encouraging agricultural landowners to adopt conservation practices is crucial to enhancing ecosystem services in privately-owned farm landscapes. To improve engagement with landowners and increase adoption rates, much research has been dedicated to investigating how different psychological, social, economic, and political factors correlate with adoption. However, these studies largely measure adoption as a discrete, binary event. Doing so obscures sequences of landowner decisions and engagement techniques that conservation practitioners use to encourage landowners' progression through the adoption process. We report on two studies that contribute to the emerging literature on the agricultural conservation practice adoption process and the varying effectiveness of engagement techniques throughout. First, interviews with conservation practitioners in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, USA, yielded a preliminary model of the different stages in the adoption process and what techniques practitioners find effective at each stage. Second, an online experiment examined the effectiveness of a visualization intervention across two sequential outcomes in the adoption process, seeking further information and contacting a practitioner. Our results suggested that practitioners use a wide variety of engagement techniques, most of which are unique to a single stage in the adoption process, and that the effectiveness of the visualization technique varies substantially between different stages. Together these studies outline a suite of techniques that other practitioners may find effective at different stages of the adoption process, and suggest that research can better inform practice by accounting for variation in the effectiveness of different techniques across stages of adoption.

Effects of perceptions of forest change and intergroup competition on community-based conservation behaviors

Approximately one quarter of the earth's population directly harvests natural resources to meet their daily needs. These individuals are disproportionately required to alter their behaviors in response to increasing climatic variability and global biodiversity loss. Much of the ever-ambitious global conservation agenda relies on the voluntary uptake of conservation behaviors in such populations. Thus, it is critical to understand how such individuals perceive environmental change and use conservation practices as a tool to protect their well-being. We developed a participatory mapping activity to elicit spatially explicit perceptions of forest change and its drivers across 43 mangrove-dependent communities in Pemba, Tanzania. We administered this activity along with a questionnaire regarding conservation preferences and behaviors to 423 individuals across those 43 communities. We analyzed these data with a set of Bayesian hierarchical statistical models. Perceived cover loss in 50% of a community's mangrove area drove individuals to decrease proposed limits on fuelwood bundles from 2.74 (forest perceived as intact) to 2.37 if participants believed resultant gains in mangrove cover would not be stolen by outsiders. Conversely, individuals who believed their community mangrove forests were at high risk of theft loosened their proposed harvest limits from 1.26 to 2.75 bundles of fuelwood in response to the same perceived forest decline. High rates of intergroup competition and mangrove loss were thus driving a self-reinforcing increase in unsustainable harvesting preferences in community forests in this system. This finding demonstrates a mechanism by which increasing environmental decline may cause communities to forgo conservation practices, rather than adopt them, as is often assumed in much community-based conservation planning. However, we also found that when effective boundaries were present, individuals were willing to limit their own harvests to stem such perceived decline.

Behavior toward on-farm food safety: Commercial and exporter pistachio growers

Consumers' demand for high-degree food safety obliges the producers to respect health principles and enhance their product quality in the manufacturing process. Food safety refers to the conditions and practices that preserve food quality in order to prevent contamination and foodborne illnesses. This study aimed to investigate farmers' behavior toward on-farm food safety in Iran. So a survey study was conducted on the research population composed of commercial and exporter pistachio growers in Iran of whom 120 were selected. This paper reports the results of this exploratory study to conceptualize the measurement of pistachio growers' farm food safety using the theory of planned behavior. Structural equation modeling (partial least squares) was used to draw the research models and the relationships between latent variables and indicators. The findings revealed a statistically significant relationship between intention and self-efficacy. The intention is one of the most important variables in determining the planned behavior that has the greatest impact on behavior. Future research on this topic is recommended to use more variables that affect farmers' decision-making processes to form a strong opinion in predicting their behavior. It is crucial to consider some effective interventions such as providing large-scale training and community awareness programs for pistachio growers, particularly with the help of mass media, adopting suitable policy-making for on-farm food safety, and specifically supporting pistachio growers for the implementation of GAP-related practices.