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Measuring farmer conservation behaviors: Challenges and best practices
- Source :
- Land Use Policy. 70:414-418
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2018.
-
Abstract
- This article presents a guide for understanding the purposes and appropriate uses of different measures of conservation behavior. While applicable across natural resource management contexts, we primarily draw upon agricultural conservation research to illustrate our points. Farmers are often of interest to researchers, program managers, extension professionals, and non-governmental environmental organizations due to the significant impact of agricultural production practices on environmental resources. Practitioners are often interested in producer behaviors when they are planning or evaluating a project, developing or evaluating policy, or developing and testing theory. Within those bounds, we identify when it is most useful to assess an actual behavior (self-reported or observed) or behavioral intention (willingness or intent to pay/accept, support/participate in a policy or program, or engage in a conservation practice), and present examples of how they have been used in the past. We close with three recommendations for those conducting research related to agricultural producer behaviors: 1) research should be theoretically grounded, even when the purpose isn’t to develop theory; 2) great care should be used when selecting behavior measures, dependent upon the purpose of the research, and 3) composite measures should be used when possible and appropriate.
- Subjects :
- business.industry
Best practice
Conservation agriculture
Geography, Planning and Development
0211 other engineering and technologies
021107 urban & regional planning
Forestry
02 engineering and technology
010501 environmental sciences
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Environmental economics
Test theory
01 natural sciences
Environmental resource
Conservation behavior
Agriculture
Agricultural productivity
Natural resource management
business
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Nature and Landscape Conservation
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 02648377
- Volume :
- 70
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Land Use Policy
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........bb271c106bcadbd8922e3218988b548b