Awards

Rachel E Schattman,Eric M Clark,Luke Trinity,Scott C Merrill

doi:10.1525/elementa.2021.00120

Awards

Rachel E Schattman, Eric M Clark + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2021.00120

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Abstract

There are many examples of nonmonetary awards which can serve as proxies for social recognition of good agricultural stewardship and conservation behavior. However, the degree to which these awards motivate implementation and sustained use of conservation practices (such as cover cropping) has not been adequately examined. In this study, we used a serious game approach to explore the effect of nonmonetary conservation awards on participants’ agricultural management decisions in an online experiment. Our results show that study participants were highly motivated to implement cover crops on a year-by-year basis by the fictional Ecobadge award, particularly when award thresholds were set at low levels. There was no difference between participants with prior agricultural experience and those without. Although participants who were not motivated to seek the Ecobadge achieved higher mean financial returns, they also had a wider variation in their financial performance as a group. Those who attained the Ecobadge were less risk-tolerant than those who did not. Achievement of the Ecobadge decayed over several rounds of game play, except among participants who planted cover crops on a high percentage (≥50%) of their land, suggesting these participants possessed high intrinsic motivation. This exploration suggests that nonmonetary awards have high potential to serve as motivational tools to increase adoption of cover crops and potentially other agricultural conservation practices, likely as part of a suite of motivational strategies. We suggest that organizations reconsider how they issue these awards. Better integration of awards with opportunities for peer-to-peer recognition among farmers is a promising approach to expand implementation of conservation practices.

Highlights

Conservation agriculture has been defined as that which minimizes soil disturbance, integrates permanent soil coverage with crop rotations, and facilitates plant species diversity (Hobbs et al, 2008; Food and Agriculture Organization, 2016)
The role of social motivation has been understudied in the context of cover crops, how a farmers’ personal values, and the degree to which they respond to intrinsic or extrinsic motivation leads to different farm management decisions. To address this gap in our understanding about cover crop adoption and by extension our understanding about adoption of conservation agriculture practices in general, we focus on conservation awards
Award thresholds Our results show that participants are motivated by social recognition as demonstrated by the ratio of cover crops to cash crops planted on a simulated year-to-year basis

Summary

Introduction

Conservation agriculture has been defined as that which minimizes soil disturbance, integrates permanent soil coverage with crop rotations, and facilitates plant species diversity (Hobbs et al, 2008; Food and Agriculture Organization, 2016). As an agricultural management practice, cover crops have both monetary and nonmonetary costs and benefits, both for individual farms and society. Many of these are difficult to quantify and/or assign economic value to, though this does not diminish their importance. Recent systematic reviews of qualitative research show that social norms play a larger role than previously accounted for, as do perceptions of conservation programs (Ranjan et al, 2019) and farmers’ views on the balance between production and land stewardship (Raymond et al, 2016) With these assessments in mind, we posit that conservation awards can serve as multifunctional social tools, as rewards for delivering public service, Art. 9(1) page 3 of 17. It’s almost like the Nobel Prize for agriculture” (The Sand Country Foundation, 2016)

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