REECAP 7th Annual Meeting

Behavioral Drivers To The Adoption Of Sustainable Agricultural Practices: A Best-Worst Scaling Experiment Among Italian Winegrowers

Not scheduled

20m

German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig

Using behavioral insights or economic psychology to improve food, agricultural, and agri-environmental policies Session Block

Speaker

Claudia Stefania Gondos (Department of Agricultural and Food Economics, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza, Italy)

Description

Motivation and Research Question

Over the past two decades, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has progressively integrated sustainability goals, with the 2023-27 reform reinforcing this direction through voluntary eco-schemes that incentivize sustainable farming practices. Given the growing role of voluntary measures, understanding the factors influencing farmers' decision-making in adopting sustainable practices is crucial for improving policy design and effectiveness. While existing research emphasizes the importance of behavioral determinants in this transition, these factors remain underexplored, highlighting the need for further investigation to enhance the adoption of sustainability schemes. On these premises we investigate which factors do farmers consider to be the most and least relevant in the adoption of sustainable farming practices and which determinants affect the relative importance attributed by them.

Methods

To address our research questions, we designed a survey with two main sections. The first section is a questionnaire to collect information on general farm characteristics, sociodemographic variables, and farmers’ perceptions of contextual barriers. The second section involves an experimental task using a Best-Worst Scaling (BWS) exercise to examine the behavioral determinants influencing the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices. The BWS included 11 behavioral factors capturing dispositional, social, and cognitive dimensions. A Balanced Incomplete Block Design (BIBD) generated 11 choice sets, in which farmers were asked to identify the most and least relevant behavioral factor influencing their decision to adopt sustainability practices. Using the responses, we calculated individual BWS scores and estimated a Random Parameter Logit model to analyze heterogeneity in the relative importance attributed to different behavioral factors. Additionally, we applied a Fractional Multinomial Logit model to examine how factor relevance relates to sociodemographic and contextual characteristics.

Results and Lessons Learned (for the design of agri-environmental policies)

Results show that expected environmental benefits and environmental sensitivity are the most important factors, followed by expected costs. Social influences, such as peer behavior and social approval, rank lower overall—although their importance rises among male farmers and those converting to organic farming. Economic and institutional barriers significantly reduce the relevance of environmental and ethical factors. Interestingly, when respondents perceive the institutional context as a barrier, the relative importance attributed to expected economic benefits decreases. This suggests that institutional obstacles are so significant that they outweigh the perceived advantages of potential economic benefits. Ultimately, our findings show that effective agri-environmental policies must go beyond financial incentives, integrating behavioral insights and most importantly, institutional support to encourage voluntary adoption.