Doing More with Less: Leveraging Social Norms and Status Concerns in Encouraging Conservation Farm Practices

1. Introduction

Incentivizing farmers to engage in pro-environmental behaviors, such as conservation, is an issue that is high on the political agenda (e.g., Marr, Howley, and Burns 2016). While historically farmland was valued primarily for its capacity to provide food and other raw materials, increasingly farmers are recognized as major influencers of environmental outcomes (Kantelhardt 2006; Howley et al. 2014). Recognizing this, the European Union (through the Common Agricultural Policy, or CAP), the United States (through the farm bills), and Australia, along with many other developed countries, have set up subsidy schemes to promote farmer conservation efforts. The principle behind these policy interventions is that many such activities that would be beneficial to society are not profitable at the level of an individual farmer. Therefore, agri-environment schemes (AESs) have tried to encourage farmer participation in conservation efforts through financial inducements (e.g., Cary and Wilkinson 1997), based upon the working assumption that farmers are rational profit-maximizing agents (Edwards-Jones 2006). However, examples abound in the literature of instances where farmers exhibit behavior that would be against their financial self-interest (Key and Roberts 2009; Musshoff et al. 2013; Howley et al. 2015). This means agri-environmental policy initiatives that are based on the assumption that farmers will seek to maximize profits have proven to be less effective than anticipated (e.g., Christensen et al. 2011; de Krom 2017). This is not to say that business-related objectives are not important to farmers. Rather, farmers operate within a social and cultural environment where, in many instances, profit may not be the sole driver of behavior (Willock, Deary, Edwards-Jones, et al. 1999; Willock, Deary, McGregor, et al. 1999; Vanclay 2004; Pannell et al. 2006; Howley 2015).

In this study, we obtained 799 responses from farm operators, and, using a randomized online survey design, we tested whether interventions that harnessed identity concerns could be effective complements to monetary incentives when it comes to encouraging conservation farm practices. The first experiment tested whether there is a role for public policy to enhance the conspicuousness of pro-environmental behaviors as a means to encouraging conservation farm practices. With this experiment, in cooperation with an agriculture and environment partnership known as Championing the Farmed Environment (CFE),¹ we examined whether providing farmers with an opportunity to demonstrate their “green credentials” to the wider public would increase their stated intention to maintain environmental practices once their current AES contract ends. The second experiment examined whether providing farmers with information relating to the participation of other farmers in a hypothetical biodiversity activity increases their stated intention to engage in such an activity. We hypothesized that providing farmers with a descriptive norm relating to what relevant others do will act as a frame of reference and thus influence their own choices. Overall, our results suggest that nudges based on farmer status (publicity) and social norms can be effective in shifting intentions toward conservation behaviors.

The conceptual framework for the present study draws heavily from Lequin, Grolleau, and Mzoughi (2019), who proposed that farmers’ propensity to adopt environmental policies can be characterized within a two-dimensional space that recognizes the importance of both identity-based utility and profit-related concerns. Although there are a variety of nonmonetary influences on farmer behavior, we focus on identity considerations as the basis of this work. Social identity theory offers a useful framework when considering identity issues (Tajfel 1974; Hornsey 2008). Social identity theory suggests that individuals have several social identities and their behavior is influenced by a strong need to maintain conformity between their actions and the identities they seek to uphold (Tajfel 1974; Benabou and Tirole 2006). In essence, individuals form group attachments, and in contrast to the rational agent model, their own behavior is influenced by how they feel it will be judged by those within a shared social group. In this fashion, group norms come to act as behavioral reference points. Certain farm activities (e.g., environmental conservation) may enhance profits but diminish identity-based utility, as the activities may be perceived as not in keeping with the expected behavior of individuals in a particular social group. Put differently, conservation activity may be detrimental to farmers’ own self-image or the identity they seek to uphold. There may for instance be a conflict between conservation farm practices and what is commonly referred to as a productivist identity (Burton 2004a; Howley et al. 2015). Underpinning a productivist identity is a desire to maintain land in “good” condition and use all available land for agricultural production.

Looking beyond the agricultural sphere, social scientists and policy practitioners have taken advantage of the importance people place on identity considerations to influence behavior across a variety of domains. One example is through the application of social norms in “nudging” people toward societally beneficial behavior. This involves communicating behavior to people about what other group members do—a descriptive norm —or what other group members think people should do—an injunctive norm (Farrow, Grolleau, and Ibanez 2017; Dessart, Barreiro-Hurlé, and van Bavel 2019). Providing information in such a fashion has been shown to be effective in encouraging societally beneficial behavior in a variety of domains such as reducing binge drinking (e.g., Werch et al. 2000) and littering (Cialdini, Reno, and Kallgren 1990; Brown, Ham, and Hughes 2010) as well as increasing energy conservation (Schultz et al. 2007). Interventions based on social norms are thought to be effective because individuals will seek to marry their behavior with the social identities they seek to uphold. Put simply, if individuals feel relevant others (i.e., people in a social group they identify with) are engaging in a specific behavior, they are more likely to do so themselves because individuals do not operate within a social vacuum. Rather, they consider whether their actions are in keeping with the behavioral standards associated with relevant social groups.

A further related illustration of where identity concerns have been shown to affect behavior is through a commonly reported desire to engage in activities that enhance one’s social standing. People often perform good deeds (e.g., donate to charity) and tend to avoid selfish ones (e.g., stocking up on free sauces at a fast-food restaurant) not purely because of altruism but also because they care about their self-image (Sexton and Sexton 2014). In other words, reputational concerns are important, and people may take actions primarily designed to boost their social standing. For example, public recognition has been shown to increase charitable donations (Karlan and McConnell 2014) and people’s willingness to pay a premium for conspicuous, environmentally friendly cars (Sexton and Sexton 2014). Farmers have also been shown to engage in identity-enhancing behaviors that confer social status even if they impose additional economic costs, for instance, overinvesting in highly visible “Harvestore” silos in the rural United States (Lequin, Grolleau, and Mzoughi 2019). Most agricultural experts recommend that U.S. farmers buy cheaper options for storing their corn and silage, but the status-conferring quality of the Harvestore appeals to many farmers (Lequin, Grolleau, and Mzoughi 2019). A similar example in France concerns the “10-tons wheat club” (Salhi et al. 2012). Farmers often devote considerable resources to become a member, even if it is not economically profitable for them to do so.

Recognizing the importance of identity-based utility in farmer decision-making, in this study we test a number of novel interventions designed to leverage identity concerns (i.e., social norms and social status) in encouraging environmentally beneficial behaviors. There exists a rich literature illustrating the importance of sociological and psychological constructs such as “identity” in understanding the behavior of farmers (see Sulemana and James 2014 for a summary). The majority of existing work has focused on using regression analysis to test whether various sociological and psychological constructs, such as identity, can predict farmer behavior (e.g., Burton 2004b; Howley 2015; van Dijk et al. 2016). Other work has used techniques such as cluster analysis to develop typologies of farmers based on underlying values and identities (e.g., Maybery, Crase, and Gullifer 2005; Reimer, Thompson, and Prokopy 2012; Sweikert and Gigliotti 2019). However, relatively little research has looked specifically at the effectiveness of sociopsychological insights in forming interventions that are designed to change farmer behavior. Recent exceptions include Kuhfuss et al. (2016b), who tested the effectiveness of social norms in encouraging the maintenance of AES benefits in the long run, and Pellegrin et al. (2018), who tested whether the “identifiable victim effect” as applied to plants could be used to encourage participation in a conservation program.²

While research using regression analysis and cluster analysis has done much to improve our general understanding of farmers’ decision-making, we suggest that there is a need to move beyond understanding toward testing how we can apply sociopsychological insights in leveraging real behavioral change. The present study aims to take a step in this direction by testing the effect of these mechanisms on stated preferences. Before describing the methods and results, we briefly summarize in the following section some of the existing work relating to farmer identities.

2. Farmer Identity and Environmental Behavior

While long recognized as an important driver of individual behavior in psychology and sociology, it is only relatively recently that identity considerations have been used by economists in analyzing economic outcomes. Perhaps the most influential work in this area is that of Akerlof and Kranton (2000), who first introduced the concept of identity into the standard utility-maximizing framework. They proposed that people have several social identities and that these identities can alter one’s utility function or preferences. In this fashion, they suggest that identity can be used to explain behavior in various scenarios where traditional utility maximization fails to provide a satisfactory prediction. Considering farmers, two identities in particular have primarily been the focus for past research: productivist and conservationist (Burton 2004a; McGuire, Morton, and Cast 2013), though a more recent study adds civic-minded and naturalist (McGuire et al. 2015). Someone identified as having a strong productivist identity is someone who places significant weight on status markers such as high yields or more generally the appearance of the farm (Ribaudo 2015).

A distinction is often drawn between productivist considerations and profit goals because maximizing yields (or other status markers such as the general appearance of the farm) may not necessarily be synonymous with increasing profits (Walford 2003; Burton and Wilson 2006; Howley et al. 2015). An illustration of the importance of a productivist ethic can be obtained by looking at farmer behavior after the 2003 CAP reform.³ While this reform, and in particular the shift to decoupled payments, made it financially optimal for many farmers to reduce (even completely) their level of production, there was little evidence to suggest that farmers reacted in such a radical manner (Hennessy and Thorne 2005; Gorton et al. 2008; Howley et al. 2012). That is, farmers still overwhelmingly maintained a productivist mindset and worked to keep their land in agricultural production. In effect, many farmers were subsidizing unprofitable farm production with decoupled payments and off-farm income in order to maintain a productivist-oriented lifestyle.

While a productivist ethic is no doubt prevalent among farmers and feeds into farmers’ overall perception of what it is to be a “good farmer,” it is also true that a conservationist identity is important to many. For example, while certain cohorts of farmers appear unwilling to participate in an AES even when they can set the price themselves (Vanslembrouck, van Huylenbroeck, and Verbeke 2002), many others appear willing to engage in unsubsidized pro-environmental behaviors (Lokhorst et al. 2011). Central to the conservationist identity is the fact that many farmers regard themselves as not just business owners but also as custodians of the countryside and are concerned with leaving a legacy for future generations (Lequin, Grolleau, and Mzoughi 2019). They may also enjoy the prestige and social status associated with being known as someone who cares about the environment (Michel-Guillou and Moser 2006; Atari et al. 2009).

We suggest that both productivist and conservationist identities will, to varying degrees, be important to farmers. The question arises as to which identity will be prevalent in a particular context. Research in this area suggests that a given identity will shape behavior when it is made more salient (Hogg and Turner 1987; Oakes, Turner, and Haslam 1991; Benjamin, Choi, and Strickland 2010), and situational cues can activate an identity (Lequin, Grolleau, and Mzoughi 2019). This serves as the theoretical underpinning of our experiments. We propose that by framing environmentally beneficial practices in a certain way as to activate (or make more salient) a conservationist identity, we can encourage pro-environmental behaviors.

In our first experiment, we test the effectiveness of two interventions designed to allow farmers the opportunity to demonstrate their “green credentials” to the wider public. Experimental evidence suggests that people prefer to engage publicly rather than privately when it comes to prosocial behavior in order to gain in social status (Anderson and Kilduff 2009; van Vugt and Hardy 2010; Sexton and Sexton 2014). In other words, identity concerns can serve to encourage people to undertake costly actions in order to demonstrate prosocial behavior to others. This has been referred to as conspicuous conservation (Sexton and Sexton 2014). In this experiment, which we label as our status intervention, we test the effectiveness of various mechanisms designed to allow farmers the opportunity to demonstrate their green credentials. Typically, farmer engagement in conservation practices is largely unobservable to the public. Other status markers associated with a productivist as opposed to conservationist identity such as high yields and the general appearance of the farm are more readily demonstrable to other farmers. In keeping with the idea of conspicuous conservation, we hypothesize that providing farmers with the opportunity to boost their self-image by demonstrating their green credentials to the public will help activate a conservationist identity and thus encourage environmental conservation.

In our second experiment, we test the effectiveness of two group-norm appeals that describe the environmental practices of other farmers. For ease of description, we label this as our social-norm intervention. Our expectation is that communicating what relevant “others” do when it comes to environmental stewardship will encourage farmers to see pro-environmental behaviors as enhancing their identity, thereby activating a conservationist mindset.

3. Methods and Data

4. Results

Before moving to our key results, we first present some descriptive data relating to farmers’ responses to two questions designed to assess their environmental attitudes. The first question asked, “As a farmer, would you describe yourself as ‘environmentally-friendly’?” The second asked, “Do you believe other farmers have a duty or responsibility to protect the environment?” The responses to these two questions are summarized in Figure 1. Most farmers who responded to these questions (95% of 598 responses) described themselves as environmentally friendly, and the belief/norm surrounding the environmental responsibility of farmers is stronger still (Figure 1b). We note that notwithstanding the anonymous nature of the survey, these overall trends are likely to be subject to social desirability bias. However, they do give a general indication of farmers’ positive views regarding the importance of environmental issues.

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Figure 1

Respondent Attitudes Toward the Environment (a) and Respondent Beliefs about the Desired Behavior of Other Farmers (b)

Status Intervention: Maintenance of Environmental Measures

In our sample, 235 of the 607 farmers who completed the questionnaire (38.7%) reported that they were currently enrolled in an AES. All 235 were asked whether they planned to maintain the changes they had made to their farming practice as a result of participating in the scheme, even if the contract was not renewed. Responses could take one of four possible values on the following four-point scale: “definitely not,” “probably not,” “probably yes,” and “definitely yes.” Because this scale forces a choice, in coding these responses, we used the values −2, −1, 1, 2; that is, we left a space where a neutral response would have been in order to create a cardinal scale that implies there is a larger difference between a “yes” and a “no” than there is between different magnitudes of yes or no. Seventy-five respondents were randomly assigned to the control condition (no additional recognition offered), 72 were assigned to the award condition (farmers could potentially be nominated for a CFE environmental champion award), and 85 were assigned to the website condition (farmers could potentially be recognized on the CFE’s environmental champion web pages). Figure 2a plots the raw responses. We see that both treatment conditions result in an increase in the number of farmers planning to maintain environmental measures, though the website condition makes the most difference at the extreme “definitely yes” end of the scale. If we pool the responses that were either “probably yes” or “definitely yes,” then 68% of respondents plan to maintain measures in the control condition, 82% plan to maintain measures in the award condition, and 80% plan to maintain measures in the website condition.

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Figure 2

Respondent Answers to Question about Maintaining Environmental Measures Even after AES Contract Ends, Separated by Treatment (a) and Means of Responses in Each Treatment When Coded as Binary (b)*

*Yes = 1, No = 0 data, with 95% confidence intervals

Using the aforementioned coding scheme, one-sided t-tests of whether the mean in the treatment condition is greater than in the control condition yield p-values of 0.0344 (award treatment) and 0.0064 (website treatment). Given that the cardinal scale used may be problematic, we also performed a Mann-Whitney U-test of ordinal rank. This yields p-values of 0.1091 (award treatment) and 0.0127 (website treatment). In order to avoid the issues associated with cardinality, we also generated a simple binary variable, where we assigned a value of 0 to both “definitely not” and “probably not,” and a value of 1 to both “definitely yes” and “probably yes.” This allows us to perform t-tests simply on whether each treatment significantly increases the number of people who plan to maintain environmental measures, regardless of preference strength. The means and 95% confidence intervals of this binary variable are plotted in Figure 2b. One-sided t-tests of mean differences yield p-values of 0.026 (award treatment) and 0.0418 (website treatment). We report one-sided p-values for additional power, given we know the direction of the expected effect (two-sided p-values can be obtained by doubling the one-sided p-values). As a robustness check, we also performed an ordered probit regression on the original uncoded dependent variable with four values. This analysis suggests that the website treatment is slightly more effective than the award treatment when we take preference strength into account. This is in line with the relatively large number of “definitely yes” responses for the website treatment, as shown in Figure 2a.

To conclude, from an environmental stewardship perspective, what is encouraging is that the majority of farmers plan to maintain their pro-environmental farm practices, even when their current AES ends and they are under no financial obligation to do so. This is in keeping with previous research on French farmers (Kuhfuss et al. 2016b). What these results make clear, however, is that providing farmers with an opportunity to demonstrate this publicly can substantially further increase intentions to maintain environmental features.

Social-Norm Intervention: Wildlife Activity

As outlined in “Social Norms,” our question testing social norms asked how interested farmers would be in taking part in a hypothetical wildlife photography activity. Each question was scored from 0 to 10, where 0 means “not at all interested” and 10 means “extremely interested.” In the control treatment, which described the activity but contained no social norm, the mean level of interest was 4.38 (n = 264, σ = 3.24). To examine the potential effectiveness of social norms in encouraging participation, we first pooled our treatment conditions (both descriptive norm appeals) and compared the mean response to farmers in our control group. The mean level of interest in our treatment groups was 4.73, which represents an 8% increase, relative to the control group. A one-sided t-test testing the alternative hypothesis that the mean in the treatment condition is greater than the mean in the control condition results in p = 0.07.

Next, we looked at each treatment separately (Figure 3). In the first social-norm treatment, which included facts about the number of species and land area covered in a similar real previous event, the mean level of interest was 4.82 (n = 273, σ = 3.20). This represents a 10% increase in interest over the control condition, and a one-sided t-test yields p = 0.056. In the second social-norm treatment, which provided a statistic from a previous survey about the proportion of farmers who undertake environmental activities on an informal basis, the mean level of interest was 4.62 (n = 262, σ = 3.01), a 5.5% increase over the control condition. While of the hypothesized direction, this difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.19). Considering these results as a whole, the findings support the suggestion that descriptive norms (particularly when specifically tied to the behavior in question) may encourage pro-environmental behaviors. However, the effect sizes in this instance are modest.

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Figure 3

Mean Level of Interest in Wildlife Activity by Treatment

Note: 95% confidence intervals are plotted using the t-distribution.

5. Discussion and Conclusions

Drawing on insights from social psychology and behavioral economics, our conceptual framework characterized whether farmers would favor pro-environmental behaviors according to the expected consequences for their social identity. Proponents of economic instruments usually contend that “appropriate” price signals are all that is required to achieve changes in farmers’ behavior (Maybery, Crase, and Gullifer 2005). While price signals such as financial inducements or added profitability (e.g., through yield enhancements) can improve the attractiveness of certain conservation farm practices, it could be that there is limited potential to this approach. For instance, a lack of farmer participation even when profitable has limited the scope and efficacy of environmental programs (Carey, Manchester, and Firbank 2005; Pellegrin et al. 2018).

To date, the conventional policy prescription among economists and other advisers in encouraging conservation activity is to increase its profitability. This is based on the idea that farmers are rational agents who will engage in activities that will maximize their profits, regardless of other nonmonetary considerations (Howley 2015; Pellegrin et al. 2018). Farmers may, however, experience more than changes to their finances when changing their farm activity. For instance, while costs and returns are clearly important for farmers’ decision-making, identity considerations may make it optimal from an overall utility perspective to not engage in what may look like a more efficient farm practice. To put it simply, a particular practice may enhance profits but diminish farmers’ identity, for example their conceptualization of what it is to be a good farmer. Our argument is not that subsidies or other policy instruments are ineffective but rather that there is limited potential to these approaches. This is because, for many, farming is not just a business but a way of life (Gasson 1973; Willock, Deary, Edwards-Jones, et al. 1999; Willock, Deary, McGregor, et al. 1999; Howley 2015). More generally, farmers operate within a social and cultural environment, and identity-based utility can be an important component of farmers’ decision-making.

While identity-based considerations may discourage certain conservation practices given a potential conflict with a productivist ethic, it is also true that they can be harnessed to encourage pro-environmental behaviors. This study highlights two interventions with significant potential for harnessing real behavioral change when it comes to environmentally beneficial farm practices. The first draws upon the idea that reputational concerns are important to people. That is, people often seek to increase their social standing through their behaviors. In this way, behavior is not just a reflection of individualistic needs but is also shaped by social identity or self-image. Our results suggest that simply providing farmers with a mechanism to demonstrate their green credentials could encourage conservation farm practices, especially because some of these practices may otherwise be invisible or misunderstood by the general public (Dessart, Barreiro-Hurlé, and van Bavel 2019). Such an approach can be seen as leveraging a “keeping up with the Joneses” type concept but one designed to enhance societally beneficial environmental outcomes. The second relates to social norms and draws on the idea that individuals will tend to conform with behavior that is in keeping with the perceived norms of groups with which they share a similar social identity (e.g., other farmers). Many farmers engage in a plethora of informal environmental practices for a host of nonmonetary reasons (e.g., altruism, legacy, prestige), and simply providing this information to farmers in an accessible manner can encourage further conservation practices in that it can help to activate a conservationist identity.

Our study looked at the impact of social status and social norms independently of each other. However, future work along these lines may seek to combine social status and social-norm messages into a single consolidated treatment. One might expect that the combined effect of the two mechanisms taken together may not scale additively if there is an element of psychological “crowding out.” For example, mental accounting theory suggests that the combined value of a series of monetary gains and losses is valued differently than when the series is separated into independent gains and losses (Thaler 1985). It would be interesting to see whether a similar effect can be demonstrated in less easily quantifiable situations. A further consideration for future work would be an examination of heterogeneity in impact across the population. Our study looked at the influence of behavioral interventions aimed at encouraging environmentally beneficial farm practices for farmers as a whole, but there is much to learn regarding whether certain subgroups are more subject to what we classify for simplicity as sociopsychological interventions and if so under which circumstances.

A potential limitation with this work is that we rely on stated intentions as opposed to actual behavior when estimating the impact of our proposed interventions. It is possible that farmers will either behave strategically or be influenced by social desirability bias, leading them to misstate their willingness to engage in conservation practices. Crucially, because farmers were randomly assigned to treatments, there is no reason to expect that these effects will differ between our treatment and control groups. This means that our proposed interventions should act as a reasonable guide as to the effectiveness of leveraging social norms and status concerns in encouraging conservation practices. However, we cannot be as certain of the actual proportion of farmers who would engage in each particular activity.

Taken together, our results suggest that there is a significant role for public policy in leveraging sociopsychological insights to encourage conservation farm practices. A characteristic feature of much of what we propose and indeed of interventions that draw on behavioral science more generally is the need for little if any additional funding. Low-cost interventions of this sort seem particularly important in the U.K. context. While the U.K. government has committed to upholding the current design under CAP until 2022, the United Kingdom will need to develop a new set of agricultural support policies now that it has left the European Union.

The question arises as to what these new policies will look like. While there is a considerable degree of uncertainty, government spokespeople have indicated a preference for a more market-oriented policy and importantly one with a lower overall level of financial support (Franks 2016; Marr and Howley 2019). This will of course be of serious concern to the agricultural sector, but the upside, if it can be characterized as such, is that there will be added scope to rethink how we structure and design any support payments, as well as more broadly engage with farmers in order to enhance the overall range and effectiveness of any policy interventions. Already there is much debate among relevant stakeholders regarding what agricultural policy should look like in a post-Brexit (post-CAP) landscape (e.g., Grant 2016; Hill 2017; Swinbank 2017). We agree with recent sentiments suggesting that insights from social psychology and behavioral economics, especially when tested using experimental methods, have an important role to play in the debate on future agricultural policy (Thoyer and Préget 2019). Of course, nudge-based interventions cannot replace market-based policy approaches entirely (Loewenstein and Chater 2017), and care should be given when using them so as not to overstep ethical boundaries (see Sunstein 2015). However, when they are used in tandem with traditional policy, they have the power to shift agricultural behavior toward societally beneficial outcomes with relatively little additional funding. We believe this study represents one step toward the development of a more holistic agricultural policy approach.