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Humanity faces the challenge to produce sufficient food, fuel and fibre at contested natural resources for a growing world population. Intensive farming, driven by economic pressures, leads to adverse environmental effects. Transitioning to sustainable farming is crucial, however, success of policies like the EU's Common Agricultural Policy in promoting sustainable practices is limited. Recent studies highlight the importance of social factors in adoption, including social norms, gender effects, and identity conflicts, though these aspects are often underrepresented in empirical investigations in the global North.
This paper targets at closing this gap and investigates potential gender effects in uptake decisions for more sustainable farming practices. Based on reviewed literature, we see environmental concern and networking behaviour as two important antecedents for decisions to adopt sustainable farming practices with gendered structures.
First, environmental concern, considered as environmental attitude, can be seen as an evaluation of the future behaviour to engage in pro-environmental farming practice (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). We expect: Expressed environmental concern is positively associated with intentions to adopt or adoption of sustainable practices (conjecture 1a). In this context, tendencies of women with stronger environmental concern and pro-environmental behaviour, relative to men, were reported (Zelezny, Chua and Aldrich, 2000; Desrochers et al., 2019). Noted as a strong predictor of pro-environmental behaviour, we expect: The relation between environmental concern and adoption (intention) of sustainable practices is moderated by gender (conjecture 1b).
Second, networking and cooperation can generate social capital and social pressure, catalyzing the adoption of sustainable practices (Knowler and Bradshaw, 2007). The relation of networking and cooperation to social norms as antecedent to intention and behavior frames conjecture 2a: Networking attitudes are positively related to the intention to adopt or adoption of sustainable practises. As networks offering access to social capital can be male-dominated at low diversity rates, gender can moderate the influence of social norms in decision-making (McDonald, 2011). We thus expect: The relation between networking attitudes and adoption (intention) of sustainable practices is moderated by gender (conjecture 2b).
A partial-least-square structural equation model, in a reflective mode, is applied to investigate the relationship of the established conjectures ‘environmental concern’ and ‘networking attitudes’ to the ‘adoption decision of sustainable intensification’ under potential moderation effects by gender. Potential control variables include demographic information and farm characteristics. We estimate one model (1) concentrating on conjectures 1a and 2a, whereas a second model further incorporates the moderation effect of ‘gender’ (conjectures 1b and 2b).
We apply existing survey data from 2017 covering the northern German peatland area (see Weltin et al., 2019). In total, 464 farmers filled out the questionnaire; with 410 responses stating if and which sustainable practices are applied, among which 393 were willing to indicate gender. With the questionnaire being designed to shed light on transformation processes, we use the data set to investigate the gender dimension in the adoption of sustainable practices that relate to the concept of sustainable intensification. Therefore, we rely on the binary self-indication of female and male given the survey design.
To construct ‘adoption’, we generate two intensity variables, as the number of sustainable agronomic practices and regional integration activities, respectively. The practices in the field of agronomic development include: reduced tillage for grassland and for arable land, intercropping, cultivation of legumes and of minimum five crops, flower strips and precision farming. For regional integration, the activities include: exchange of resources with regional farms, membership for joint machinery use, direct marketing, marketing with regional label and cooperation with regional interest groups.
‘Environmental concern’ is constructed by environmentally-friendly farming practices, such as organic farming and voluntary adoption of agri-environmental schemes (AES) before 2013 (long-term participation), currently and the number of adopted measures. The social dimension of environmental concern is reflected in the indicators: attachment to business region, regional pioneer in innovation adoption and self-appraisal in conservationist attitude; as a stronger local identity positively contributes to environmental concern. Regarding the construct ‘networking attitude’, indicators reflect social capital and collectivism, as a catalyst for adoption. These are: the frequency of asking for advice, of coordinating operational decision with neighbours, of consulting with agricultural advisory services, the importance of access to knowledge, of the cooperation with land use representatives, private and social contacts, other farmers as well the number of memberships in e.g., parties.
Our preliminary results show some evidence for conjectures 1a (β = 0.323; f^2 = 0.132) and 2a (β = 0.284; f^2 = 0.103). This suggests that ‘environmental concern’ and ‘networking attitude’ directly and positively influence the adoption (intention) of sustainable practices for our sample. Effect sizes are, however, rather small and thus, relevance of the structural paths must be reviewed. Our preliminary results did not display empirical evidence for C1b (β = 0.016; f^2 = 0.000) nor C2b (β = 0.009; f^2 = 0.000), although path coefficients are positive but small.
Given the preliminary nature, these results should be considered with caution. However, the empirical approach seems promising for investigating the roles of other underrepresented groups concerning natural ecosystems to support policy design in fostering uptake of sustainable practices.
References
Desrochers, J. E., Albert, G., Milfont, T. L., Kelly, B. and Arnocky, S. (2019). Does personality mediate the relationship between sex and environmentalism? Personality and Individual Differences 147: 204–213.
Fishbein, M. and Ajzen, I. (1975). Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Knowler, D. and Bradshaw, B. (2007). Farmers’ adoption of conservation agriculture: A review and synthesis of recent research. Food Policy 32(1): 25–48.
McDonald, S. (2011). What’s in the "old boys" network? Accessing social capital in gendered and racialized networks. Social Networks 33(4): 317–330.
Weltin, M., Zasada, I., Piorr, A., Debolini, M., Geniaux, G., Miranda, D. O., Perez, O. M., Pellegrin, C., Schulp, C. J. and Marco, L. T. (2019). Milestones M3.1 and M3.2 Survey Design and Database - Final Version, ZALF.
Zelezny, L. C., Chua, P.-P. and Aldrich, C. (2000). New Ways of Thinking about Environmentalism: Elaborating on Gender Differences in Environmentalism. Journal of Social Issues 56(3): 443–457.
