Farmers’ satisfaction and cooperation in conflicts about river restoration in Germany. What influence have economy and participation?

Abstract

Interest conflicts between agriculture and river restoration are core biodiversity protection problems, as farmers' non-cooperation can be an obstacle to implementing river restoration processes within the context of the EU's Water Framework Directive (WFD). A central issue is ensuring farmers' satisfaction that affects their willingness to cooperate (WTC) in situations of economic losses.During the last years, participation measures were implemented to address this problem and to complement existing information and compensation measures. Focusing on the situation in Germany, we examine the effect of economic factors and procedural measures on farmers' satisfaction and WTC. For this reason, we conducted a structured telephone survey with 300 farmers impacted by river restorations. We investigated the effect of their economic situation, economic impairment, and participation processes on farmers' satisfaction with the project outcome, satisfaction with the participation process, and WTC. We conducted correlation and regression analysis to find relations and effects within the data. The analysis reveals four results: 1) Income situation, soil number of the affected land, and perception of land pressure are economic factors with (negative) effect on farmers' satisfaction. 2) Compensation and participation measures partly positively affect farmers' outcome and procedure satisfaction. 3) Direct talks to planners are mostly the salient significant participation procedure. 4) Satisfaction with the project's outcome and satisfaction with the participatory procedure have considerable explanatory power considering WTC. Our results provide essential information for policymakers and administration in biodiversity protection in general and river restoration in particular. They indicate that involving farmers in planning river restoration measures, assuring high transparency and inclusiveness, and convincing farmers of the reasonableness of the measure is of the same importance to achieve satisfaction and WTC as only focusing on compensation measures.