From narrative to actions: Theoretical framework for the integration of reframed narratives into New Zealand's agricultural policy

M. Kirchner

Forest Policy and Economics, 2025, vol. 178, issue C

Abstract: New Zealand's food and fibre sector causes manifold environmental problems, ranging from greater levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in freshwater streams to immense biodiversity losses. New Zealand's politics intend to improve its environmental performance in land use practices. The “Moving the Middle” (MtM) research project aims to contribute to this goal by influencing land managers' surrounding systems and system dynamics using leverage points. The aim of the paper is to shed light on the processes of how narratives could lead to actions. This research gap has been largely ignored by idea-based approaches, especially at the empirical level, by not providing observable methods and tools to analyse power. We want to discover how reframed narratives can be effectively transferred into practice using interest and power mechanisms that leverage system changes to actors who influence land use. To answer the question and test our three hypotheses, we developed a narrative definition based on the Actor-centred power approach and adapted the Research-Integration-Utilisation model for knowledge transfer to transfer reframed narratives to actors. Within a pre-test, our results revealed that the existing narratives in New Zealand's land use sector consisted of dominant and shared information. Furthermore, we identified and characterised four different integration forums where reframed narratives could be introduced. From a theoretical perspective, the study bridges the interest-based theory and the idea-based post-positivist-constructivist world views at an empirical-analytical level.

Keywords: Narratives; Actor-Centred power (ACP); RIU model; Knowledge transfer; New Zealand; Agricultural land use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934125001625
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:178:y:2025:i:c:s1389934125001625

DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2025.103583

Access Statistics for this article

Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott

More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().