Farmer motivation to participate in cooperative agri‐environmental and climate measures

作者：Jule Marie Huber, Sophie Hoffmann, S. Schüler, Sebastian Lakner, Menko Koch, Catrin Westphal, Annika L. Hass, Tobias Plieninger · 发表于：Earth stewardship. · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1002/eas2.70011 · 被引用次数：10 · 研究领域：Agricultural Innovations and Practices、Organic Food and Agriculture、Sustainable Agricultural Systems Analysis

Abstract Agri‐environmental and climate measures (AECM) have been designed to promote biodiversity and ecosystem services but have thus far been unable to reverse the strong declines of farmland species. To enhance the environmental effectiveness of and participation in AECM, schemes are increasingly implemented cooperatively at landscape scale. Our study aims at identifying the factors that motivate farmers to participate in cooperative AECM. For this, we conducted a quantitative survey with farmers in Lower Saxony (Germany). We developed a questionnaire that collected data on farmers' participation intentions and experiences with AECM, factors that motivate their participation in AECM, and their perspectives on cooperative AECM. In general, we found that farmers were motivated to participate mainly by economic factors: the financial attractiveness of the scheme and its fit to farming activities. Environmental values and scheme design features were relevant, too. Social factors played the least important role in motivating farmers to engage in AECM. However, specifically for cooperative schemes, social capital was relevant, besides an improved scheme design, an increase in environmental effectiveness, and a reduction of costs and effort. In combination with environmental and economic factors, social motivation gained importance for cooperative AECM. This indicates that when designing cooperative AECM, social factors should not be considered in isolation but in combination wi...