Grouping agri-environmental practices in Germany along behavioural drivers for adoption

Abstract

Widespread adoption of sustainable practices is crucial for a transformation of agriculture towards sustainability. Effective policy interventions to increase their adoption require an understanding of the behavioural drivers of adoption. Based on interviews with twelve experts on German agriculture, this study assesses the importance of a comprehensive set of behavioural factors for the adoption of 18 agri-environmental practices. The rated level of importance of the behavioural factors varies significantly across the practices. While enhancing farmers’ capability in terms of knowledge is confirmed to be a key factor for adoption of most practices, opportunity-related factors such as financial resources, and motivation-related factors such as future-orientation or habits are more specific to certain sub-groups of practices. Cluster analysis reveals three robust groups of practices that share similar behavioural drivers. For instance, a cluster consisting of agroforestry, hedges, and permanent grassland coincided as overall demanding for farmers and difficult to reverse, requiring future-orientation, a favourable legal context without short-term leases, and financial resources. For another cluster – legumes, reduced mowing, reduced tillage, rotational fallow and reduced soil pressure – adoption of the practices may actually save workforce and time for farmers, but - in addition to knowledge needs - depend on proper integration within farmers’ habits and routines. The findings of our study, both at the level of single practices and on cluster-level, can inform the design of targeted policy interventions such as trainings and financial support schemes.