Simulating human behaviour in social-ecological systems: farmers’ adoption of agricultural innovations

Abstract

The agricultural sector faces major challenges to produce sufficient food for the world’s rising population. Addressing these challenges requires a transformation towards sustainable agriculture. Although sustainable agricultural practices such as agroforestry provide various benefits, small-scale farmers’ uptake of such practices can be very low in certain regions. Consequently, interventions are required that support farmers’ implementation and raise low adoption rates. Small-scale farmers’ adoption of sustainable agricultural practices and the underlying decision-processes constitute the core of this thesis. Overall, the thesis aims to support policy-makers in developing and implementing effective measures that encourage farmers to adopt innovative sustainable practices. The specific objectives are (1) to identify efficient information seeding strategies to disseminate agricultural knowledge within social networks, (2) compare common behavioural approaches to explain farmers’ adoption decisions, (3) identify intrinsic drivers based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour and evaluate the effectiveness of non-economic policy interventions targeting intrinsic motivational factors, and (4) assess the interrelated human-environmental consequences of farmers’ adoption decisions under different climate scenarios.