How farmers’ self-identities affect agri-environmental transition in Grassland Use: a mixed method study in the Swiss Alpine Region

Martina Spörri, Maria Haller (), Nadja El Benni (), Gabriele Mack () and Robert Finger
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Maria Haller: Forest and Food Sciences, Berne University of Applied Science
Nadja El Benni: Research unit competitiveness and systems evaluation, Agroscope
Gabriele Mack: Research unit competitiveness and systems evaluation, Agroscope

Agriculture and Human Values, 2025, vol. 42, issue 1, No 21, 319-332

Abstract: Abstract Agri-environmental policies programmes mainly focus on economic incentives for the agri-environmental transition in grassland use. However, barriers rooted in farmers’ self-identities, which determine their behavioural intentions toward environmentally friendly practices, are often unaddressed in policy design. We conceptualise two self-identity gradients, productivist–multifunctionalist–conservationist and traditionalist–innovationist, to analyse drivers and barriers of agri-environmental transition processes among farmers. In order to grasp the complex multidimensional and hierarchical concept of self-identity as initially proposed by Stryker (Journal of Marriage and Family 30: 558–564, 1968), our analysis comprises a triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods on a comprehensive dataset of 75 interviews with Swiss alpine grassland farmers. Through the semi-deductive coding of responses to open questions (revealing hierarchical aspects) and a factor analysis of closed, Likert-scale questions (revealing multidimensional aspects), we positioned each farmer along the conceptualised self-identity gradients. Our framework allows to explain contradictory behaviours exhibited by farmers: Our results revealed a mismatch between the farmers’ prevailing conservationist-innovationist self-identity and their actual intensification behaviour. This mismatch can be explained by the discrepancy between the individual self-identity and the prevailing productivist–innovationist idea of a good farmer, on which farmers continue to base their decisions. Within this discrepancy, however, lies the potential for a shift in the idea of what constitutes a good farmer and a consequential agri-environmental transition.

Keywords: Agri-environmental policy; Alpine farming; Post-productivist; Triangulation of methods; Land use intensity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s10460-024-10608-w

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