Adoption Of Conservation Practices: What Have We Learned From Two Decades Of Social-Psychological Approaches?

Conservation practices (CPs) are frequently presented as a solution to the environmental impacts of intensified agriculture systems. CPs have, however, not been universally adopted by farmers, despite significant state financial support. Metaanalyses have confirmed that no single factor consistently explains farmers' decisions, highlighting the need for integrating social-psychological factors in adoption studies. This paper reviews how the two most influential socialpsychology theoretical frameworks, namely the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Values-Beliefs-Norms (VBN) theory, have been applied to farmer adoption of CPs. Since the mid-2000s a burgeoning but circumscribed literature has demonstrated the relevance of these approaches. Although VBN theory has been much less used than the TPB, both frameworks have led to policy recommendations supporting farmers' (1) environmental education; (2) access to technical assistance; and (3) environmental identities. Conceptual coherence, variable measurement and model consistency issues need, however, to be addressed to increase the relevancy of studies.