Farmers adoption of integrated crop protection and organic farming: Do moral and social concerns matter?

By N. Mzoughi. 2011

310 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate empirically the role of moral and social concerns in farmers' decision to adopt integrated crop protection (IP) and organic farming (OF). A survey questionnaire has been sent to 1286 fruit-growers and vegetable producers located in the French areas of Alpes de Haute Provence, Hautes-Alpes and Vaucluse. Analysis of individual responses (NÂ =Â 243) shows that, although economic concerns play a strong role, a significant number of respondents give high importance to moral and social ones. We also examine how these considerations matter according to different crop protection strategies, that is, conventional farming, IP and OF. Using a multinomial logistic regression, we find that (1) social concerns (e.g., showing to others one's environmental commitment) drive both IP and OF adoption, (2) moral concerns (e.g., do not feel guilty about one's choices) increase the probability of organic farming adoption only, and (3) farmers who give high importance to economic concerns (e.g., cutting production costs) are less likely to adopt OF.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/75b09b81f1d8267795a555c1248724881202906d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

Leverage Points for Governing Agricultural Soils: A Review of Empirical Studies of European Farmers’ Decision-Making (2018, background): “countries, so if women behave differently than men, as some of the studies analysed here indicate [86,108,112,121], it would be interesting to understand Figure 8.”
Understanding Producers’ Motives for Adopting Sustainable Practices: The Role of Expected Rewards, Risk Perception, and Risk Tolerance (2016, background): “In particular, given the small-business nature of hog production in the Netherlands, we argue that what we call ‘expected personal rewards’ of the manager–owner play a role in the adoption of sustainable practices (in line with Howley, 2015; Mzoughi, 2011).”
Why do farmers join Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes? An Assessment of PES water scheme participation in Brazil (2014, background): “These models are popular inmany natural sciences and health studies, but their application to social science and economics is alsowidespread, for instance in studies analyzing the adoption of conservation techniques or organic farming (Garbach et al., 2012; Mzoughi, 2011).”
Factors Influencing Adoption of Sustainable Farming Practices in Europe: A Systemic Review of Empirical Literature (2020, background): “[60] and Tiffin and Balcombe [61] found that female farm operators have better chances of adopting organic farming compared to their male fellows, while Mzoughi [58] did not find the effect of gender significant.”
Taking risks in the face of uncertainty: An exploratory analysis of green innovation (2016, background): “Mzoughi (2011), for example, demonstrates that environmental concerns are a significant determinant of the strategic choices of French fruit and vegetable producers.”
Spatial patterns of organic agriculture adoption: Evidence from Honduras (2014, background): “…importance of information access and particularly the role of informal information sources for organic farmers (Burton et al., 1999; Genius et al., 2006;Morone et al., 2006) and the relevance of motivational factors such as environmental concern for the adoption decision (Best, 2010;Mzoughi, 2011).”