Actions speak louder than words: Adoption of sustainable farming practices based on an integrated model

Abstract

Despite the ample efforts to address the attitude-behavior gap in individual pro-environmental actions, none of the previous research focused on the inconsistency between farmers' attitudes toward organic farming and their decisions to go green. Based on an integrated behavioral model of the TPB (theory of planned behavior) and ABC (attitude-behavior-context) theory, this study provides the first empirical evidence that uncovers the contextual and/or psychological factors driving farmers' attitude-behavior incongruity. The observed attitude-behavior relation indicates that there is a much higher share of conventional farmers exhibit attitude-behavior incongruity compared to their organic counterparts. As predicted by the TPB-ABC model, farmers' tendency to exhibit inconsistency between attitude and behavior is found to increase with their perception of policy support. The working hypothesis that drivers of the discrepancy between farmers' positive attitude and actual adoption behavior are different for the two groups of farmers is also confirmed in this study. Specifically, in addition to the contextual factors, personal capabilities play a role in driving conventional farmers' sustaining use of synthetic inputs and lock-in to unsustainable farming practices. Further analyses of the influence of holding a positive attitude on conventional farmers’ economic performance suggest the presence of economic benefits associated with holding a favorable attitude toward organic farming.