Colombia is one of the world's most important producers of Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica), whose coffee-growing zone coincides with a biogeographic hotspot of biodiversity. Given that coffee agroecosystems are grown by both organic and conventional schemes of management in Santander, a region which produces coffees with specialist distinctive flavours, this study aims to better understand the factors that influence the adoption of these different schemes of management. A combination of ethnographic techniques and quantitative methods were used to examine the predominant drivers of adoption and revealed farmer perceptions associated with coffee farming, and the complexity of interacting factors, that surround their decision making. The results of qualitative analysis suggests that social identity of coffee growers, the existence of farming spaces (lived, perceived, rationalized), the influence of coffee institutions, attitudes about management practices, and social relations of production, all play an important role in the process of decision making. In quantitative terms, we identified 18 socioeconomic drivers, some with interacting effects that had significant influence on the decision to adopt either organic or conventional practices. In particular, at local scale, important factors were technology availability, the type of landowner, formal education of farmers, the role of institutions, membership of community organizations, farm size, coffee productivity and the number of coffee plots per farm. Likewise, economic drivers, such as crop profitability, determined how farmers are involved in trade and market networks at broad regional, national, and international spatial scales. By adopting a more integrated approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies, we characterized the complexity of factors that influencing adoption of coffee management schemes and show that not only financial factors but also a variety of other social factors drive farmer decision making. Identifying the most influential behavioural drivers provides policy with opportunities to better support farmer livelihoods.

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Achieving goals for conservation and sustainability using nature, decision-making, and policy planning requires accurate modes of description to understand the relationship between society and the environment. Despite most planning strategies being constrained by policy objectives, planning is expected to be more participatory and inclusive of the plurality of values and all types of socio-spatial relationships. Based on Lefebvre's social theory, the objectives of this work are to propose a triad of spaces as a helpful framework to analyse nature's contributions to people (NCP), describe different spaces socially constructed by coffee and potato farmer communities in Colombia, and explore the implications for various kinds of decision-making. Using qualitative research methods, this manuscript describes three spaces: lived spaces as intangible spaces based on local, religious, and ceremonial values of NCP; perceived spaces include farmer spatial organization according to the ties of kinship and the downward course of streams, the incidence of negative NCP, such as plant diseases, and types of management crops; and conceived spaces as the overlapping of different spatial views of territorial planning. Given that NCP has great potential to integrate diversity of values about nature and cultural contexts into decision-making, the triad of social spaces offers a spatial dimension to the analyses of NCP. Lived spaces make non-material NCP and non-instrumental values more visible. Perceived spaces highlight material NCP and regulating NCP with the view that maintenance of NCP in the future is essential for relational and instrumental values, e.g., how material NCP and regulating NCP of landscapes are perceived and by whom. Conceived spaces emphasize the predominance of the intrinsic biophysical values of NCP. Thus, the triad of social spaces as a conceptual framework can be useful in the operationalization of NCP in environmental management, the governance of schemes, and the implementation of land-use plans at the local scale. By thinking of these spaces relationally, such insight can inform and enhance decisions and policymaking about the value of places toward the priorities of meeting management. The results of the study emphasize the important policy implications of recognizing lived and perceived spaces in decision-making and highlight the role of NCP in facilitating the communication of these spaces to support spatial management of land use.

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