Social-psychological determinants of farmer intention to adopt nutrient best management practices: Implications for resilient adaptation to climate change

Successful adaptation to global climate change and enhancement of agricultural watersheds' resilience requires widespread use of Nutrient Best Management Practices (NBMPs) by farms of all sizes. In the US, adoption of many NBMP practices is voluntary and insufficient to achieve local and downstream conservation objectives. Despite evidence that both social-psychological factors and socio-economic factors influence farmer decision-making, very few studies of farmers' decision-making related to NBMP adoption combine these two factor groups in a theoretically rigorous way. To better understand farmers' management decisions, we test the social-psychological Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to determine the relative influence of attitudes, perceived social norms, and perceived behavioral control on adoption of nine NBMPs. A survey was designed by the research team and implemented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA-NASS) in 2013, and replicated in 2016, on a stratified sample of 129 farmers (including panel data on 56 farmers). Farmers were located in the Missisquoi, and Lamoille River watersheds of the Lake Champlain Basin in the Northeast region of the United States. Survey responses revealed variation in past adoption of NBMPs was sensitive to practice type and farm size. We developed nine weighted structural equation models to test endogenous (social-psychological) and exogenous (policy, economic and demographic) predictors of farmer intention to adopt NBMPs. We found that perceived behavioral control had the largest effect size and strongest statistical significance on the farmers' expressed intentions to adopt NBMPs in the future. For a subset of NBMPs, perceived social norms and farmer attitudes toward these NBMPs were each also significant drivers of intention to adopt individual practices. Among the exogenous variables, we found that large farm size, college education, and having a conservation easement all had a positive influence on farmers' intention to adopt NBMPs. This study suggests that for widespread adoption of NBMPs, environmental managers, policy makers, and program developers should be attentive to farmers' perceived behavioral control, and support the design and execution of outreach and technical assistance programs that build on drivers of farmers’ decision making.