“The impact of farmers’ individual behaviour on the provision of environmentally sound production methods”
Problem
Throughout history agriculture has been and still is one of the main influential factors on landscape, nature and natural resources. Today’s agricultural system in industrialised countries is rather perceived oppositional to nature and externalities of production are mostly negative. For Austria no study exists that aims to clarify how the influencing factors on farmers’ management decisions interrelate and how the perceptual framework of the farmers looks like. It is not known whether economic goals trump over conservation goals or if and how other aspects are relevant for the production decisions of farmers. Therefore this research should clarify if some farmers take foremost profit maximization aspects into consideration and if others base their decisions on different and multiple reasons.
Project
The first part of the research will be a qualitative interview round with experts and stakeholders which should in a participatory way offer more or less an outsiders view on the production decisions on farms, help to clarify certain methodological aspects of the study and should basically offer possibilities to bring the results into fruition. These expert-interviews are seen as a concourse- quasi a collection of the existing perspectives on environmentally friendly agriculture. The results and views of experts will be used in a second research step namely the Q-Methodology. The aim is not only to construct different types of farmers but rather to elicit which management-styles are inherent among farmers and describe them according to the findings. These different types should provide further insights into motivation in order to establish circumstances which facilitate enhanced or at least constant providing of environmentally sound practices.
Project team
phd-student: Walder Peter, Dipl.-Ing.
supervisor: Kantelhardt Jochen, Univ.-Prof. Dr.
co-supervisors: Penker, Marianne, Ao.Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.
Freyer, Bernhard, Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.Ing.
Hogl, Karl, Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.nat.techn.