Incentives to motivate producers to increase the adoption of conservation practices.
Crop using conservation methods to improve soil health; Credit: USDA/NRCS
Authors: Dan Read and Lisa Wainger
Other contributors: Jim Shortle and Dave Abler
What is the issue?
Chesapeake Bay water quality and aquatic habitat is impaired by excess nutrient runoff. While nutrient runoff from wastewater and air emissions has declined substantially, agriculture remains the leading contributor and offers the greatest potential for continued improvement. Financial and technical assistance interventions are the main tools used to promote the voluntary adoption of conservation practices by producers yet have only been partially successful at encouraging adoption of some of the most effective practices.
The understanding of farmer motivations to adopt BMPs has been studied from a variety of perspectives and much of the literature is focused on relating farmer socio-demographic traits to propensity to adopt. We wanted to synthesize existing knowledge about influencing management practice adoption, across all farmer types, and make it directly usable by conservation practitioners, also known as technical assistance providers. We conducted a meta-analysis of the published literature, which is a review that merges data from many studies in statistical tests, to synthesize the evidence of actions/techniques that are effective at encouraging adoption.
What did we find and why does it matter?
We discovered that financial incentives have the strongest evidence of increasing producers' likelihood of adopting conservation practices ). The incentives reduce perceived risks to yields and income from adopting new techniques. Peer group participation was also associated with higher adoption likelihood. However, these groups may be effective at reinforcing existing practices, rather than initiating new ones.
We compared financial incentives to other techniques (use of mass media and demonstrations, peer group participation, repeated technical assistance provider contacts, and behavioral nudges). The only technique with consistent and statistically significant effects on observed practice adoption was financial assistance, after controlling for farm, region, and study characteristics. This suggests that increased funding is the most likely to promote adoption and that some other practices, particularly mass outreach events or mailings, may be largely ineffective at generating interest in adoption. Interviews with technical assistance providers confirmed the idea that mass outreach was typically ineffective.
Due to problems with how some studies were designed, further research is needed before concluding that approaches other than financial incentives are ineffective. For example, some studies testing informational programs failed to include whether farmers were receiving or were aware of cost-share opportunities, in addition to the program being tested.
What did we do?
We analyzed 87 empirical studies and 52 qualitative perception studies to test which interventions increase the voluntary adoption of conservation practices by farmers and forest landowners. Using the quantitative studies, we developed a meta-regression analysis to test which intervention techniques explained variability of adoption rates, across studies. In a second step, we filtered by study quality (e.g., randomization and clear analysis reporting), which reduced the number of studies to 54 (240 observations). We synthesized the perception studies by first assigning each study to the same intervention categories used in the meta-regression and then coding studies by their main findings, according to the studies’ authors.
Publication completed for this work
Read, D. J., & Wainger, L. (2023). Assessing intervention effectiveness at promoting voluntary conservation practice adoption in agrienvironments. Conservation Biology, 37, e14009. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14009
