Commitment of farmers to environmental protection: From social pressure to environmental conscience

Ways of farming and ways of thinking: do farmers’ mental models of the landscape relate to their land management practices?

“…However, the differences we observed were mostly nonsignificant, which may suggest, as already advocated by Michel-Guillou and Moser (2006), that differences in representations of the environment lie in less consensual parts of individual representations. This hypothesis is also consistent with Abric (2011), who states that less consensual elements are more likely to justify contrasted commitment to different behaviors despite common belief about more consensual knowledge.…”

“…A fortiori, despite a substantial literature on relationships between farmers' values, attitudes, and behavior (Ahnström et al 2009), very few studies have addressed the relationship between farmers' mental models and their actual farming practices. Most studies used a priori dichotomous criteria to differentiate practices, e.g., organic vs. conventional farming (Michel-Guillou andMoser 2006, Kelemen et al 2013), or either collective and direct or individual and indirect elicitation methods to assess mental models (Vanwindekens et al 2014, Diniz et al 2015. Because these methods do not rely on direct elicitation of individual mental models and farming practices, they are likely to underestimate the diversity in individual practices and mental models and may therefore produce misleading conclusions.…”

Environmental perceptions of students, farmers, and other economically active members of the local population near the protected area of Axios, Loudias and Aliakmonas estuaries, in Greece

“…For instance, Lian et al (2007) reported that 45% of the Chinese farmers that were interviewed do not recognize environmental impacts of their agriculture practices. In another study, in which farmers were asked to evaluate sources of water pollution, they hold industry and household responsible for water pollution, while minimizing the impacts of their own harmful practices (Michel-Guilloua and Moserb, 2006). This was also the case in our study.…”

Landscape and biodiversity as new resources for agro-ecology? Insights from farmers’ perspectives

“…In this regard, Sigwalt et al (2012) describe how some winegrowers planted 23 km of hedgerows to demonstrate to their clients their care for natural enemies and their willingness to decrease their pesticide use. In another context, Michel-Guillou and Moser (2006) demonstrate that farmers mostly adopt proenvironmental practices to comply with social pressure rather than to put their beliefs about the environment into practice. This situation was clearly occurring in our study for the farmers who mentioned this type of resource because their pest management strategy was not https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol22/iss2/art16/ particularly caring for natural enemies.…”