Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Georg-August-University Goettingen, Platz der Goettinger Sieben 5, 37073, Goettingen, Germany.
Institute for Food- and Resource Economics, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University Bonn, Nussallee 19, 53115, Bonn, Germany.
J Environ Manage. 2024 May;359:121019. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.121019. Epub 2024 May 2.
Mitigating climate change by sequestering carbon in agricultural soils through humus formation is a crucial component of sustainable agriculture. Humus programs that are designed to incentivize farmers to build more humus are still recent innovations, so current knowledge about farmers' motivation to participate is limited. This study examines the adoption of non-governmental humus programs to promote carbon sequestration by analyzing farmers' willingness to participate in humus programs and influential factors. We specifically investigate behavioral factors underlying farmers' adoption of humus programs using the Theory of Planned Behavior. To this end, we collected data using an online survey with 190 German farmers and applied partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results show that (i) perceived economic benefits, (ii) the actions of fellow farmers, and (iii) farmers' sense of responsibility with regard to climate change have a statistically significant influence on farmers' intention to participate in a humus program. In contrast, the perceived ecological benefits, political pressure, the possibility of establishing humus-building measures, and prior knowledge of humus programs have no statistically significant influence. Our findings suggest that farmers' decision to participate in humus programs is strongly influenced by the financial benefits, but the actions and thoughts of other farmers, as well as their own moral claims regarding climate change, also play a crucial role. We found that farmers lack knowledge about the registration and general functioning of humus programs, which can currently be one of the biggest barriers to participation in such initiatives.
通过腐殖质形成在农业土壤中固碳来缓解气候变化是可持续农业的一个关键组成部分。旨在激励农民增加腐殖质的腐殖质计划仍然是最近的创新，因此，关于农民参与意愿的现有知识有限。本研究通过分析农民参与腐殖质计划的意愿及其影响因素，考察了非政府腐殖质计划对促进碳固存的采用。我们特别使用计划行为理论来研究农民采用腐殖质计划的行为因素。为此，我们使用德国 190 名农民的在线调查收集数据，并应用偏最小二乘结构方程模型。结果表明：（i）感知经济利益，（ii）农民同伴的行为，以及（iii）农民对气候变化的责任感对农民参与腐殖质计划的意愿具有统计学上的显著影响。相比之下，感知生态效益、政治压力、建立腐殖质建设措施的可能性以及腐殖质计划的先验知识则没有统计学上的显著影响。我们的研究结果表明，农民参与腐殖质计划的决定受到经济利益的强烈影响，但其他农民的行为和想法以及他们自己对气候变化的道德主张也起着至关重要的作用。我们发现，农民对腐殖质计划的注册和一般运作缺乏了解，这可能是目前参与此类计划的最大障碍之一。
