Framing and managing the adoption of practice change for NRM by farmers

Abstract

Public good objectives have, for many years, encouraged governments to target farmers with propositions for change to their production practices. Initially these propositions were attempts to accelerate the adoption of innovations that offered enhanced productivity. They have come to include change designed to enhance environmental stewardship. Coarse or incomplete specification of the costs and benefits of practice change, and of the whole process in which its promotion is embedded, impedes meaningful analysis of likely levels of adoption. In this paper frameworks from marketing and organisational behaviour are applied to a case study to evaluate their possible usefulness to the better framing of adoption decision making.