Summary: Overcoming the many barriers to on-farm conservation requires steadfast commitment to conservation goals. Happily, most farmers tend to strongly identify as a conservation-minded (McGuire et al., 2015), and this conservation identity does correlate with higher adoption of conservation practices (Kast et al., 2021). But, discrepancy remains between intended and actual adoption of conservation practices (Beestra, Wilson, & Doidge, 2022; Niles et al., 2015). Therefore, a gap exists between conservation values and the motivation to enact conservation practices (Webb & Sheeran, 2006). Greater intrinsic motivations are needed to overcome barriers to conservation practice adoption. Typical conservation outreach often relies on non-targeted information about the benefits of conservation to motivate behavior, often using a farmer exemplar to communicate outreach messages. But recent behavioral science shows that factual information is often not sufficient to motivate or sustain changes in behavior. Our intervention focuses on research from motivational science, which shows the importance of: (1) highlighting discrepancies between one’s values and action– accomplished through self-generated narratives (2) having an “if-then” plan, with clear steps to take if faced with challenges to one’s goals– also through self-generated narratives and (3) presenting the next step towards a goal in a way that seems attainable–accomplished using targeting messaging. Compared to business-as-usual approaches, we predict that our intervention will lead to more engagement with farmer conservation advocates, and greater tendency to seek more information about conservation.
Sponsor: Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, Sponsor Award ID22-000489